Can a wall be built from the view inside it, with no shape given from outside?
A wall that works as a bookshelf, standing in the studio of the Media Art course, Department of Information Design, Tama Art University. It was made by applying the Corpora project, a line of research continued at dNA. Corpora is the plural of the Latin corpus, body, and names a system in which local decisions accumulate to build a whole.
Every artefact has its shape decided from an objective viewpoint outside it. That viewpoint is carried over into the drawing as a system of notation, and the notation itself binds our idea of space. So we set up a notation based on polar coordinates, looking in every direction from oneself as the zero point – super-eye – and designed from the inside rather than from outside.
Each vertex of the wall is given a super-eye and calculated. Vertices placed at equal intervals scan their own surroundings, adjusting the density of what exists around them, repeatedly replicating and eliminating themselves, redesigning themselves as they go. After some fifteen thousand steps the form had all but settled. Where local conditions were met – a maximum connection length, no more than five connections – a structure appeared that can be used as a bookshelf.
SPACE
COMPUTATION
DATA
| Location | Hachioji Tokyo |
|---|---|
| Programme | Installation |
| Completed | 2007 |
| Storeys / Structure | Steel plate structure |
| Total floor area | 136.17㎡ |
| Collaborating architect | Ákos Maróy / Max Rheiner / Kaoru Kobata |
| Structural engineering | NAL (Hajime Narukawa) |
| Construction | Sunazuka Shoten |
| Photography | Megumu Wada (Doable) |
| Exhibited / Published | Shinkenchiku / Algorithmic Design (book) / graphic design 04 / STUDIO VOICE |