philadelphia PENNSYLVANIA

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

michael WETMORE & lucas SANJUAN : The course Advanced Mechatronic Reactive Spaces, a collaboration between architects and robotics engineers at the University of Pennsylvania, forms interdisciplinary teams that together design and build electro-mechanical reactive spaces. With an initial research task of fusing mechatronics and lighting design, we explored the potential of polyhedra for their transformative qualities. Using a Voronoi algorithm, we created a set of both fixed and motorized polyhedra. Interest in atmospheric affect led us to pursue the object as a transformative lighting element in which a user is given control over a reactive object and the space it inhabits. In its closed state, LED’s are focused inward resulting in an ambient object.

When actuated by remote control, the object inverts casting directional light outward and transforming not only the form but also the overall lighting conditions of the space.

sP: what or who influenced this project?

Simon Kim, Philip Beesley, d’arcy Thompson, Polyhedral Geometry and Voronoi Structures

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

Reading: Murakami (The Wind Up Bird Chronicle), Cormac McCarthy (Sutree), Atlas of Novel Tectonics, Geometric Folding Algorithms Listening To: Steve Reich, Bartok String Quartets, Dexter Gordon, Frightened Rabbit

sP: whose work is currently on your radar?

Daniel Rozin, Future Cities Lab, Kokkugia, R&Sie, Amanda Levete

additional credits:
PennDesign / PennEngineering
simon KIM & mark YIM