Yuta Ikeya / 池谷宥太
Born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1991.
Currently based in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Yuta Ikeya is a designer and engineer.
As a designer, he explores the alternative roles of technology that may build new relationships between humans and nonhuman species. He exercises critical design to challenge our norm of "developing technology for understanding and controlling nature". Leveraging his engineering knowledge, Yuta crafts tools and equipment that embrace the uncertainty of being entangled in the web of ecosystems. His explorations are strongly driven by his fascination and interactions with nonhuman species, particularly insects.
He started this line of design explorations with the project "Metamorphonic" (2022), the installation of artificial habitats that compose an ever-changing ambient soundscape from the sensor input by the domestic silk moths living on them. The project was exhibited at Dutch Design Week 2022.
Being a hobbyist photographer himself, Yuta also designs and builds analogue cameras. His first iteration of the 3D-printed motion picture camera (2021) was featured in several media including Hackaday.
As of 2024, he is a PhD candidate at Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands), researching the new paradigm of design aesthetics beyond humanised standards of beauty. He holds an MSc in Industrial Design from Eindhoven University of Technology and two MSc in mechanical engineering fields from Keio University (Japan) and the Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden).
(Portrait credit: Doortje van Dijk)
Exhibitions
2023 ”Negotiating with the Garden”, Design United EXPO, Dutch Design Week 2023, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
2023 “ARC - Algal Relay Computer“, Drivers of Change, Dutch Design Week 2023, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
2022 “Metamorphonic”, Design United EXPO, Dutch Design Week 2022, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
2022 “My First Analog Movie Camera“, Eindhoven Maker Faire 2022, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Honor/Award
2024 Featured Young Designer, Spotlighted by Christien Meindertsma, Dutch Design Awards
Experience
2023-present PhD Candidate - Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands)
2017-2021 Mechanical Designer - Tetra Pak Japan
Education
2021-2023 Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) - MScEng Industrial Design
2014-2017 KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) - MScEng Vehicle Engineering
2014-2017 Keio University (Japan) - MEng Science for Open and Environmental Systems
2010-2014 Keio University (Japan) - BSc Mechanical Engineering
Publications
Yuta Ikeya, Miguel Bruns, and Bahareh Barati. 2024. Designing for Interdependence of Bees, Garden, Designer, and the Changing Season. In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’24), July 01, 2024. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1385–1399. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3660743
Yuta Ikeya, Ron Wakkary, and Bahareh Barati. 2023. Metamorphonic: A Reflective Design Inquiry into Human-Silkworm Relationship. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’23), July 10–14, 2023, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. ACM, NewYork,NY, USA, 12 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3596053
Gizem Oktay, Yuta Ikeya, Minha Lee, Bahareh Barati, Youngsil Lee, Yuning Chen, Larissa Pschetz, and Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa. 2023. Designing with the more-than-human: Temporalities of thinking with care. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS Companion ’23), July 10– 14, 2023, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3563703.3591462
Yuta Ikeya and Bahareh Barati. 2023. Designing an Algal Relay Computer: A Critical Orientation in Exploring More-than-Human Temporality. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585874
Yuta Ikeya, Ramis Örlü, Koji Fukagata, and P. Henrik Alfredsson. 2017. Towards a theoretical model of heat transfer for hot-wire anemometry close to solid walls. International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 68, (December 2017), 248–256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatfluidflow.2017.09.002