Creative Engineering Industry Collaboration
Bridging the gap and nurturing collaboration between creative and engineering industries in Fishermans Bend
Image Credit: Workshopping design ideas at Siemens Fishermans Bend for the Mira Solar Flower project (Supplied by Pelican Studios)
As a partnership between Pelican Studios and Siemens Mobility, this project seeks to develop and implement a sustainable collaboration framework that bridges the gap between creative and engineering industries at Fishermans bend, fostering innovation through the integration of design thinking and technical expertise. Through collaboration and experimentation the process will showcase how integrating creative and engineering expertise can drive innovation, enhance employee engagement, and create meaningful public impact for the Fishermans Bend community.
The genesis of this project emerged from the FB IDEAs "Meet the Neighbours" initiative - a curated tour of Siemens Mobility's engineering and manufacturing facility in Port Melbourne back in October 2023. During this visit, a serendipitous connection formed between Callan Morgan of Pelican Studios and Brandon Fisher, Siemens' Engineering Manager, as they discussed the design challenges inherent in a public art project Pelican Studios was developing.
This catalysed a reciprocal visit to Pelican Studios, where the Siemens engineering team gained first hand exposure to the studio's portfolio of completed works and their sophisticated fabrication methodologies. The tour revealed the intricate intersection of artistic vision and technical execution that characterises Pelican's approach.
From there - the idea to develop and test a collaboration framework, using Pelican Studios’ Mira Solar Flower public art project as a case study, was born.
“This partnership demonstrates Siemens’ commitment to innovation by integrating creative approaches with engineering excellence, while showcasing our IoT and renewable energy capabilities in a highly visible public context. This collaboration also offers valuable professional development opportunities for Siemens’ engineering teams through exposure to creative problem-solving methodologies and public engagement projects.”
Mira Solar Flower is a public art installation concept developed by Pelican Studios. The vision is to create a series of majestic, 8m tall, kinetic steel structures shaped like orchids. The sculptures will feature large petals that pivot from a hydraulically driven, motion-controlled core and are lined with flexible solar panels. A unique engineering feature of the Mira concept is the integration into an Internet of Things (IoT) platform which will collect wind, solar, and video inputs and share data with each other.
To develop this concept, the team from Pelican Studios and Siemens Mobility will establish an interdisciplinary workflow that leverages both creative intuition and engineering precision to develop innovative solutions for complex challenges. The team of engineers from Siemens Mobility will be involved in weekly integration sessions through a mixture of support from Siemens Mobility-funded continuous professional development hours and after-hours volunteer activities. These regular touchpoints will ensure continuous alignment between creative vision and technical execution, while fostering the cross-pollination of ideas that sits at the heart of this innovative partnership. Siemens' expertise in motion control, IoT and renewable energy will also be drawn in to design and fabricate a functioning scale model and digital twin of Mira, which will be displayed in a public exhibition and event at Siemens Mobility.
By working together, Siemens Mobility and Pelican Studios aim to establish a replicable framework for cross-industry collaboration in Fishermans Bend, while also delivering tangible outcomes for the Mira Solar Flower project.
“This collaboration not only provides direct access to Siemens’ world class engineering expertise, design and analysis tools and industrial facilities, enabling Pelican to scale up our project capabilities, but it also will help us to connect to a broader network of potential collaborators in Fishermans Bend’s innovation ecosystem”
Project Leads
Pelican Studios
Siemens Mobility
Project Partners
FB IDEAs