Photography © Miguel De Guzman

Design + computation:Marc Fornes / Theverymany
In collaboration with Jana Winderen (visual/sound artist)
Fabrication consultant:bengal.fierro

Virtual Tour (by John Sanchez):
http://explorer360.org/spheres/ny/situation-room.html

Situation Room by Marc Fornes / Theverymany is a light-weight, ultra-thin self-supported shell structure augmented by artist Jana Winderen‘s engineered sounds. The overall form is an aggregate of twenty spheres of incremental diameters, combined to create an envelope of experiential tension, a sort of sublime dialogue between the comfort of the known and an uneasy interaction with the unknown. The resultant morphology resonates with a series of distributed transducers and lighting sources playing out through streams of porosity derived from structural stress flows across the elements.

Photography © Miguel De Guzman

The envelope is created out of boolean operations merging the spheres and lending rigidity through the inherent double curvature, while best allowing for storage through nesting of incremental radii. The inverted curvature of smoothed sphere-intersections provide additional reinforcement while blending with a series of internal rhizomatic networks derived from convergent sphere points.The internal networks subdivide and recombine, eventually resolving into columns that carry down-loads to the ground,.The apparent complexity of the internal morphology is a direct result of the dense aggregate of spheres, creating a rich repertoire of spatial conditions exemplified by compression/expansion, hierarchies and branching, knotting, coves…

Photography © Miguel De Guzman

Stress flows from structural analysis are used for directional fitness by a series of distributed agents crawling its morphology. Their trails are eventually materialized into non-linear aluminum stripes, while gaps within the force flows are translated into aperture.

Photography © Miguel De Guzman

The spatial experience is augmented through ten-channels of resonant sounds propagated across the structural surface, operating here as a membrane for distributed transducers. The system set-up provides a large scale inhabitable instrument-apparatus of play for both composer and visitor.

Photography © Miguel De Guzman

Spatial envelope, acoustic-membrane, structural-performance, assembly-parts and distributed lighting are unified and amalgamated through a coat of neon-effect, blurring one’s perception of the known.

Photography © Miguel De Guzman

Photography © Miguel De Guzman

Photography © Miguel De Guzman

Photography © Miguel De Guzman

Installation specifics: Skin area: 168,520 sq.in.;Spheroids:20;Flairs:21;Structural Nodes:26;
Columns: 3; Unique parts: 1673; Lights source: 28; Transducers:10

> via theverymany.com