for us design is a conversation it's a
way to connect things that have maybe a
cosmological aspect to it or even a
molecular aspect to it to things that
are very mundane things like a chair or
a table or room or a house things that
we live in and interact with we're
architects we do a lot of installations
and furniture objects and buildings we
like to be innovative about the
materials that we use and the systems
that drive their construction we have a
fascination with systems and we and the
particular fascination with modular
systems we tend to start with small
parts that come together to form larger
holes our kind of understanding of
modularity is something that's not quite
obvious or fixed and something that can
be a tool for finding kind of infinite
variation the way in which a log-cabin
is built is usually you cut your logs
and then you stack them we ask this
question well what would happen if you
reverse that
what happened would happen if you've
filed up all your logs first and then
you carved out your shapes your spaces
and your structures after that well the
point of initiating a process like that
is to frustrate your preconceptions
about what it things should be like and
for us that's what design is it's about
putting in place a process through which
you can guarantee surprises we've been
researching crystallography and that is
the study of solid-state matter things
like metals and diamonds
crystal structures that are modular
repetitive and that build a lot of the
world around us one thing you can say
about crystallography is that it's
driving an invention and material
culture today that is reinventing the
way that we live our lives the battery
in your cell phone the chip on the
computer these are all changing they're
becoming faster better stronger because
of the new materials that we're making
and the way in which those materials
guide energy
all of our projects start from a simple
element
for instance this one here is eight
sided shape and it's got a little wobble
in it and we call it the special
octahedron and it has this special
property that it can form these rings
it's a modular fractal structure that
can carry structure so for instance this
is a bridge that we designed using this
octahedron so this is the project that
we did for the moment it's called rule
to six we built this algorithm that
would allow you to grow and decay this
tiling of shapes you see the algorithm
live living running through iterations
never repeating itself eventually it was
about how to migrate this information
into a physical instantiation which
became basically a wall piece in the
museum all these shapes what they have
in common is they produce an infinite
variation and it's very much for us
about this search for endlessness or
infinite possibilities this is the
design of the stage set for the Aesir
project it's this attempt to realize a
kind of multimedia crystalline
environment we're interested in these
crystal structures because of the kind
of subtle and sophisticated ways that
they can organize information and seeing
the the visuals animated across the
piece kind of embody that information
flow I don't think it's quite clear to
us yet what the piece really is in its
final manifestation and that is maybe
the most pleasurable part of any project
it's ultimately about trying to discover
and remain interested and inspired by
the world around us design is not about
solving problems but creating a new
opportunity
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