Originally published in Digital Fabrications, 2009

Nader Tehrani/Georgia Institute of Technology

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This installation is the result of a one-year research process conducted by Nader Tehrani with a core team of students during his time as the Ventulett Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design at Georgia Tech. The task of the project was to analyze and develop a three-dimensional installation whose fabrication method was limited to a two-dimensional material. The underlying mission, therefore, was to radicalize the potentials of sheet material by provoking it to take on structural, spatial, programmatic, and phenomenal dimensions while adopting techniques that bring this variety of agendas into organic alignment. From the perspective of technique, the most important aspect of this project was the awareness that two-dimensional surfaces gain access to a third by way of the ruled surface.

Of the various contingencies informing the installation, the structural imperative played the most salient role. The idea was to develop a technique that could seamlessly navigate among normative structural typologies through a transformable geometric code. The aim of this geometric code was to accommodate difference within a continuous logic. The logic of the geometric unit, then, was based on the introduction and elimination of vertices—in combination with surface rotation—to create transformations in the structure. In this way, a strategy of creating phase changes was developed, imitating the way H2O can undergo transitions from water to ice, steam, or snow.