Hampshire College

Hampshire College invites the public to meet TES (The Empathetic Space) during the month of February. TES is an interactive installation that utilizes an uncharted combination of design and production techniques to alter users’ everyday interactions with space. Video

The installation will be on view daily throughout February from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m.

Situated at the heart of the Hampshire campus—the Harold F. Johnson Library—TES’s lantern-like structures reflect the topographical forms of the adjacent Holyoke Range, while its electronically animated behavior mimics the actual complexity of existing movement paths within the space.

The result is an interactive architecture that engages, challenges, and inspires viewers in re-imagining a familiar environment through a visual and environmental intervention that’s beautiful, functional, organic, and responsive.

TES is a creation of the three-week January term course, The Empathetic Space, offered through Hampshire’s new Design, Art, and Technology program.

Architecture professor Thom Long and art and technology professor Jon Slepian, their teaching assistants and Div III students (seniors) Lindsey French and Rachel Schapira, and the 11 students enrolled in The Empathetic Space course designed, built, and installed the project. Student designers and builders are Whitney Brooks, Zach Clemente, Virginia Lunt, Brian Martin, Marcel McVay, Mike Meo, Joe Oakley, Clay Royse, Arielle Soutar, Audrey Weber, and Ben Yellin.