Engineering Café offers refreshment and innovation
The new Engineering Café, which adjoins the recently opened Center for Engineering Innovation & Design, has opened its doors and is already successful in serving as an oasis and meeting spot for students and faculty from across campus, uniting many different disciplines within an engineering space. The café, designed to have a high-tech theme and function, features a signature 356-square-foot piece of programmable art that nearly covers one wall and wraps across the ceiling. The screen, which includes over 23,000 individually programmable LED lights, displays custom images and video. This feature offers a blank “art canvas” to showcase the artistic side of engineering in both education and research.
The popular concept of LED art is led by industry pioneer and Yale alum Leo Villareal ’90. The Yale-affiliated aspect of the project extends well beyond Villareal and helps make this installation uniquely Yale, with the team of contributors including Philips/Color Kinetics CEO Jeff Cassis ’77MPH, ’78MFS; architects Rich and Rob Charney (both ’76MArch); and installation guide Ted Pearlman (known as the “NYC King of LED”), who is the parent of a Yale undergrad. This Yale-associated team collaborated over a period of eight months to design and place the Yale SEAS installation—a creation that is unlike any other around the world.
The campus community has direct access to the LED canvas, and it has already attracted students from across Yale—not just engineering, but art and design majors, as well as those in the sciences (from both graduate and undergraduate programs)—to produce content for the encapsulating surface. As with the café itself, this interactive feature wall will serve as a magnet to draw in a wide spectrum of students and faculty, enabling Yale community members who might not otherwise interact to do so in a space designed to promote creativity and the exchange of information.
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