This article was taken from the March 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This undulating wave of colour represents 100 years of architectural history, depicted in 100 1.2cm plywood ribs, each representing a year since 1913 and held together by 8,080 colour pencils. "This project was a way to explore how data can be used as a design generator," says architect Adam Marcus, who runs a studio called Variable Projects in California. "The idea originally came from a class I taught in March 2013, at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture, where we discussed how to use the alumni database to generate form and colour." The curvature of the ribs expresses major historical eras and periods of the architectural school, such as the tenures of its leadership, the buildings it has occupied and the departments it has belonged to. The colour of the pencils show the types of degrees offered over the past century.
Once Marcus settled on a design methodology, his team fabricated and built the installation over ten days. "It was all governed by a parametric model that crunched the data and computed the shapes," he says. "The model linked to the fabrication equipment and the printer." After the ribs were made, more than 16,000 pencil-holes were drilled.
Next, Marcus plans to use the same spatial data concept to build a permanent public installation for a new baseball stadium in Minneapolis. He says, "We are thinking of how data gleaned from baseball, such as pitch geometries, game statistics and ball trajectories, might be used to generate the design of the sculpture."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
