The weather was cool – but the wind held off to make the opening night of LUMANOTUS a success. Tonight Anca and I give a talk on the project and our work at the Center for Design Innovation in Winston Salem, NC.

(photos: area.architecture)

We are on site with the team in Winston Salem setting up the project in Winston Square Park. Below are a few images from the initial run-through last night. Images and lights are sequenced and animated. There are 4 separate light shows from 4 designers. Another run-through this evening if the weather cooperates and then the installation opens to the public from November 13 – 17, 7pm-10pm.

(photos: area.architecture)

On Wednesday and Thursday this week we test inflated the DOUBLE TORUS and TOWER in the courtyard of TCAUP. Below are some images of the results. We still have some tweaking to do on inflation pressures and need to finish the anchoring – but in general it was a success! Thanks to the crew for all your hard work over this past month. Principals: Glenn Wilcox and Anca Trandafirescu; Assembly Crew: Secil Taskoparan, Joshua Kehl, Erika Lindsay, Jeremy Luebker, Rebecca Braun, Le Nguyen, Jake Newsum.

(Photos: Jeremy Luebker)

(Photo: Joshua Kehl)





(Photos: Jeremy Luebker)







(Photos: Secil Taskoparan)

Drawings and models for the LUMANOTUS project are on display at the Swift Wade Gallery in Winston-Salem, NC, from November 2 – 17. The full scale inflatable constructions and lighting project will be installed in Winston Square Park in Winston-Salem from November 13 – 17. The project will be lit and open to the public from 7pm – 10pm. The project is made possible with generous public support, funding from UNCSA and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan.

In mid-September we traveled to Winston-Salem, NC to conduct a workshop with the Director of Lighting Design Prof. Norman Coates’s lighting design class at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in constructing inflatable structures. We are collaborating with this group on the project LUMANOTUS – this years Winston-Salem Lightning Project. The project will be comprised of large scale, inhabitable, inflatable structures installed for 6 days in a public park in downtown Winston-Salem. The students, under Prof Coates’s direction, will design lighting and image projection schemes that will animate the structures through choreographed performances. The event will be open and free to the public – however we are accepting donations for the project through this site. There will also be a public lecture on our work and exhibition of the design material for the project during the mounting of the pieces in mid-November. Below are a few images of a small test inflatable that we built while in NC – shown both in the lighting studio and the site.

Glenn recently presented area’s 99k House project at The Lean Years conference held at the University of Michigan from March 18-19. The project was also part of an exhibition in the college gallery which coincided with the conference. Below are renderings of the project produced specifically for the exhibit. More info on the project can be found in the projects area of the site.

Anca Trandafirescu, with the assistance of Glenn Wilcox and Le Nguyen, was recognized for HOT AIR by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) with the Faculty Design Honorable Mention.

HOT AIR is the temporary installation of a large inflatable, inhabitable monument in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the overthrow of the Romanian government. The project’s name refers to both the unusually warm temperatures in Romania during that week in December 1989, which helped to bring citizens out into the streets to rally against the government; and also to the large amount of rhetoric surrounding these events.

ACSA annually honors faculty who have demonstrated excellence by providing a venue for work that advances the reflective nature of practice and teaching by recognizing and encouraging outstanding work in architecture and related environmental design fields as a theoretical endeavor.

HOT AIR was exhibited Nov. 3-7, 2009, in Timisoara, Romania, and was also on display in Ann Arbor in spring 2010 as part of TedX.

Trandafirescu and Wilcox will accept the Faculty Design Honorable Mention at the 99th ACSA Annual Meeting, March 3-6, 2011, in Montréal, Québec.

ACSA awarded three top prizes and six honorable mentions this year. HOT AIR, along with the other award-winning projects, will be published in the digital 2011 Architectural Education Awards Book.

To read more about HOT AIR—and to view photos and video—visit the 2009 news post.

tetra | n project is based on the desire to design a generative
self-supporting structure capable of variable form – through utilizing a
single robust detail – one which could be fabricated out of flat stock
material. tetra | n project accomplishes this through two means. First is
the development of part geometry based on a tetrahedron (see diagram) –
structured in this way – the generation of more complex geometry through
simple base geometry always produces well – formed planar objects.
Additionally, coincident faces of adjacent tetrahedrons always produce
continuous forms – joints always meet correctly – regardless of the
position or scale of the next part. Secondly – through the utilization of
Rhinoscript – highly complex variable formed structures of n tetrahedrons
are possible. The script is ‘run’ on an assembled tetrahedral base
structure – part generation, connective element generation, labeling,
drill holes, and part flattening are integral functions of the script.

tetra | n is formed as a single unified tower structure with an occupiable
base that supports itself simply by standing on the ground. Depth and
redundancy in the form develop not only a robust structure – but a level
of complexity and intricacy found only in organic forms. The visual effect
is of a structure that is, on the one hand, highly ordered, rigorous and
geometric, and on the other degenerates into near chaos, simulates organic
growth, and confounds clear distinctions between foreground and background.

So we finally got around to designing a new site. One thats a little more user friendly – we had been admiring the usabilty of many blog based sites like mos, and matsys and decided to go that route. Wordpress took a bit of time to set-up but the community, plug-ins and customization are great. We are still updating the projects page and will continue to add some of the recent stuff to the news.