Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Collaborator: Cecil Balmond
Completion: 2017
Client: Amsterdam Light Festival
Infinita is a light sculpture formed of two crystal forms floating on the water for the Amsterdam Light Festival. Begun as a single tetrahedron, the form is subdivided at three scales and certain pieces are removed leaving a cut white surface and shards of dichroic panels. As you move around the piece, the colour panels shift between shades of blue, green, purple and red. Light activates and accents the choreography of panels and reflections.
CHALK WALK
Location: Ebbsfleet, Kent, UK
Collaborator: Matthew Halsall
Completion: 2018
Client: Ebbsfleet Development Corporation and the NHS
The Ebbsfleet Chalk Walk Ecology Park Project was produced as a finalist design following shortlisting of the original Chalk Walk masterplan for the Ebbsfleet Healthy Garden City Ideas Competition.
The project was undertaken in collaboration with Landscape Architect Matthew Halsall and with input from local conservation charities Buglife and Kent Wildlife Trust. An ecological park is proposed, with a mosaic of habitat types utilising the unique man-made geology and site hydrology of the former quarry site, united by a series of looping walkways
BRINGING TOGETHER PEOPLE AND NATURE
Encouraging people to engage with nature is proposed to be the most successful means of encouraging a more active healthy lifestyle in Ebbsfleet; be it cycling alongside a lake, fishing, birdwatching, swimming or kayaking out to floating islands. This would be targeted both at existing groups such as the Kent Thameside Works Angling & Preservation Society, local community garden organisations and birdwatching clubs in the area; but would also aim to inspire an interest in nature for new and existing residents and attract international visitors to Ebbsfleet.
CONNECTING COMMUNITIES
The chalk walk is conceived as a continuous 5km loop route connecting new and existing communities across Ebbsfleet. It would be delivered in advance of the majority of development, and would allow pedestrians the opportunity to explore development sites as they are developed. The Chalk Walk route utilises the man-made chalk cliffs and escarpments and as such the Blue Lake chalk walk is envisaged as a pilot project - the first phase of a longer route.
A MODERN GARDEN CITY
The original Garden Cities were linked inextricably to the Arts and Crafts movement, with human craft and artfulness in harmony with nature. The proposals seek to update the Arts and Crafts ideals to a digital 21st Century context, combining the properties of chalk stone with the talents of local artists, makers and industries in order to create a character unique to Ebbsfleet. The locally-derived portland concrete would be used to create a range of furniture, habitat and cultural elements designed in harmony with one another. The repeating honeycomb motif is inspired by the natural forms:- a demonstration of efficiency, adaptability and ability to repeat or combine. The primary aim of the garden city is to encourage a reconnection with nature and a promotion of an outdoor healthy lifestyle, with the opportunity to bring together previously disparate communities.
ECOLOGY & HYDROLOGY
The Blue Lake boasts a unique hydrology, fed in part by aquifer but with seeping water from the Thames Estuary. This creates a partially-saline water type, known as Brackish water. Such conditions are relatively rare in the UK and are capable of supporting a unique range wildlife, including notable rare & endangered species. Landforming is proposed to form a series of lagoons, marshes, rockpools, reed beds and salt pans of varying water depth and salinity; thus enabling a mosaic of rare habitat types to emerge.
The Blue Lake Chalk Walk adapts seasonally to changes in water level in order to create a resilient landscape with opportunities for specialist ecology types. As part of the wider Ebbsfleet development the Blue Lake would accept rainwater runoff from neighbouring development, in order to avoid flooding and reduce impact on the drainage system. The scheme assumes a seasonal fluctuation in water level of up to 1m in a normal year and up to 2m in an extreme (1in100 year) rainfall.
Fluctuating water levels form a key component of the habitats created, and help create an environment that transforms throughout the year. During parts of the year, some pedestrian routes may flood, and in such cases alternative raised routes are provided either carved into the cliff or via floating jetty walkways.
Location: Wilson Station, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Collaborator: Cecil Balmond
Completion: 2017
Client: Chicago Transit Authority
Much of the station’s surrounding architecture was born out of the Roaring 20s optimism expressed through strong Art Deco forms. A reflection of the enthusiasm of the time, the style is highly formal, geometric and symmetrical. The artwork extends this fascination with geometric forms into a contemporary space. Rather than serving as a symbol of the machine, geometry is the machine. Arpeggio acts as a spatial organizer and generates a layering of readings across space.
Viewers moving through the turnstiles are drawn into the artwork with the strong geometric shapes brought to life as light is reflected inside the hexagons. The folded composition spirals through space, shifting in rotation and scale using the golden ratio. It is a fractal, expressing self-similarity at multiple scales. Embedded geometric forms and continuous movement are expressed in the facets with changing materials and simple details.
The changing perspective and expectation of the view brings many readings to the sculpture. Arpeggio is a constantly sliding and jumping centre. As soon as the eye focuses on one area, the layered organisation reveals a new shifting reading.
The folded geometry of the field is juxtaposed with a new reading on the top of the piece. A mirror positioned adjacent to the piece exposes this secondary interpretation of the piece as a visually animated experience through colour shifting paint. The mirror creates a feeling of depth in the small space, adding more layers to the experience. The design scales down as it moves outward and softens the geometry of the station. It flows, shifts, and jumps along highly ordered intervals giving the traveller a sense of rhythm.
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Collaborator: Cecil Balmond
Completion: 2017
Client: Farhang Foundation
The Freedom Sculpture is a contemporary metaphor to the message inscribed on the Cyrus Cylinder, the rst declaration for human rights by Cyrus the Great. A 20 foot long scripted language from the prime number sequence engages passing pedestrians and speeding traffic in two interwoven stainless steel cylinders.
The sculpture shines silver in the sun, and as a person approaches, the inner golden cylinder appears, as the precious, yet fragile, freedom within. At night the gold colour illuminates as the silver bars protect the treasured element.
Location: Syracuse, New York, USA
Collaborators: Cecil Balmond and !Melk
Client: City of Syracuse
Collaborating with !Melk Landscape Architects, this pavilion becomes part of an urban redevelopment for the city of Syracuse. The non-symmetrical form creates momentum around the piece, engaging the eye to move inside and out around the landscape.
Park residents interact with the piece by gazing through an oculus from the north end of the park and by following a ramp onto an internal platform. The spiralling louvres animate the sculpture during the spring and summer by collecting and moving rainwater around the exterior, while at winter snow gathers on them and inside the oculus.
Location: Ferragamo Museum, Florence, Italy
Collaborator: Cecil Balmond
Completion: 2013
Client: Salvatore Ferragamo
Strange Attractor is a sculpture inspired by the complexity and strength of the muscles and tendons in the human foot. Formed from polished stainless steel and precariously balanced, Strange Attractor appears as a series of arcs that orbit around a floating core.
The central core is stabilised by sixty tensioned cables attached to the curving arcs, providing stability to both the core and frame. Reflecting the surrounding light and hues on its surface, the sculpture expresses the dialogue between compression and tension in a balance of linear and curved lines.
Completion:2009
The 7x12 table is a do it yourself project that only requires the use of a table saw and single sheet of plywood. By incrementally adjusting the blade distance from the fence, slots for 7” and 12” records are created as a way to display and store vinyl LPs.
Location: TEA Building, London, UK
Collaborators: Michael Dosier, Tyson Hosmer and Thiago Mundim
Completion: 2010
Client: London Architecture Festival
The design search for collective intelligence cannot ignore the importance of the unit within the collective. Porosis is a modular construction system capable of generating complex, cellular structures utilising standardized units.
The assembly consists of two unit types: an asymmetrical, 2 axis component and a symmetrical single axis connector. Codifying connections based on topological results, cellular structures are speci ed to adapt the resulting assembly fabric to specific contextual conditions.
The system was assambled and exhibited as part of London Architecture Festival at the Nous Gallery. The system is capable of exhibiting diverse material and structural behaviours when assembled in open, closed, and semi-open systems.
Location: Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Collaborators: Eric Ellingsen, Thomas John McLeish, Homero Rios and Stephanie Herrera
Completion: 2009
Client: Museum of Science and Industry
This 23 foot tall interactive model is part of the Museum of Science and Industry's Fast Forward exhibit which teaches children and adults about a potential new building type, the vertical farm. As people drag virtual crops into the vertical farm, screens display statistics about traditional and vertical farming, while a series of choreographed lights begin to illuminate transparent shelves of color and texture that cantilever off the structural core of the living system.
The boxes are programmatic elements of the vertical farm: agriculture farms, gardens, apartments, laboratories, aquaculture farms, waste water and bio solid recycling, and commercial.
Location: Architectural Association Design Research Lab, London, UK
Collaborators: Michael Dosier, Tyson Hosmer and Faysal Tabbara
Completion: 2011
This research investigated achieving radically different spatial typologies from a materially and computationally emergent, integrated, responsive and reconfigurable a-typological proto- system through employing multi-agent systems and analogue computing.
Within the research of ComputerBlue, agency is examined through swarm intelligence as a vehicle to enable the structuring of reconfigurable space.
By addressing how agent-based systems inform architectural space, the research makes a distinction between deploying agent-based systems as a tool for pattern formation as opposed to deploying an active system that continuously organizes architectural space. The former enables emergent design by proxy, while the latter attempts to continuously organize space and material in response to external and internal factors.
Adopting basic principles of ecological relationships and integrating them with responsive environments and multi-agent systems results in a temporal architecture that is continuously adapting to its occupants.
Location: Front Member's Room, Architectural Association, London, UK
Collaborators: Fahim Mohammadi and Yifan Zhang
Completion: 2010
Client: Architectural Association
The exhibition celebrate Peter Eisenman's arrival in the UK in the 1960s. The exhibition featured his first two design proposals from the period. His competition entry for the Liverpool Cathedral was reconstructed from archived drawings for his show at the AA.
Location: Les Abattoirs, Casablanca, Morocco & Archeworks, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Collaborators: Eric Ellingsen, John Castro, Michael Brassil, David Basham, Isaac Plumb and Diba Salimi
Completion: 2009
Seeing Eye Architecture is organised by ratios found in the golden isosceles triangle and the three dimensional fractal spiralling genes of a romanesco cabbage. The structure is grown from one simple base unit of corrugated cardboard. The single geometry of the golden isosceles is scaled up or down by rotation, such that the long side of the triangle always becomes the short side of the next. This introduces the organizational possibility of radical difference in a system of perpetual sameness.
Each next scale up or down gives birth to another golden triangle and a resultant wider isosceles triangle. The flat component is then folded along the generational seam between triangles. These three dimensional components are then fastened to one another, edge to edge, resulting in a spiral.
Location: Mesa Arts Center, Mesa, Arizona, USA
Collaborator: Cecil Balmond
Client: Mesa Arts Center
The Cloud creates a new community gathering space, shielded from the sun, that connects the Mesa Arts Centre with downtown Mesa. Composed of three elements, tensile fabric, glass oculi and splayed columns, the shade sculpture is activated by the movement of the sun across the sky. The glass oculi, covered in dichroic film, projects a kaleidoscope of colour onto the fabric and ground below. At night, the oculi will be illuminated in a display of light and chromatics. Depending on the weather and time of day, each visit to The Cloud will be a unique and personal experience.
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Timber frame construction offers the designer the warmth found from organic materials. This summer house demonstrates the elegance and pure geometry of lumber with a grid of modular bays located on the northern shoreline of Chicago. Each bay is treated for different spatial conditions.
