Benjamin Fehl’s class, If Picasso Were An Engineer, seeks to integrate art and engineering by combining function and aesthetics. They’re often regarded as polar opposites, says Fehl ’86, ’07 MArch A&A, a lecturer in the School of Engineering Design and Innovation, but both are essential to engineering design.  

The goal of the course, which Fehl taught for the first time in the fall semester, is to help engineering students use their imaginations and unlock their inner artist—even if they believe it doesn’t exist. Every student gets a sketchbook, a set of pens, and their first assignment is to draw a live fish. “I was looking for something organic,” Fehl says, “something fluid that’s not a fixed structure like a building. Fish are beautiful and they’re playful and I wanted the students to experience something light and fun and beautiful.”

He also wants students to understand techniques like color and shading (another assignment is to use shading to draw a glass of water without drawing the edges of the glass), lightness and depth, and stillness and movement, so they can apply them to engineering design. “When you draw a building, you’re always tempted to draw it flat rather than in perspective,” Fehl says. “But a fish is always moving around. It’s never going to be in the same position twice. You want to be able to tap into that movement. You want to take a mental snapshot of the fin. That’s the heart of the class.”

For their final projects, Fehl’s students worked in the fourth floor “Makerspace” of University Park’s new Engineering Design and Innovation Building to create a range of artifacts using a selection of different materials and techniques. One student made a 3D-printed apple and filled it out with a clear resin that incorporated candy wrappers and empty chip packets. Another made a 3D-printed model of Harry Parker Hammond, former dean for whom the engineering college is named.