Christmas is coming soon, take a look at Astrocyte, the latest work of artist and architect Philip Beesley, and feel the Christmas atmosphere in advance~
Astrocyte looks like some kind of giant blooming snowflake crystal, frozen in time in mid-air, allowing the viewer to slowly savor it. In fact, this installation is not just acrylic hanging from the ceiling, but also includes chemistry, artificial intelligence and immersive background music to create an architectural situation that responds to peoples existence.
Astrocyte is composed of 300,000 individual parts. The mesh structure that occupies the entire line of sight is made of elastic and lightweight thermoformed acrylic, which is laser-engraved into various geometric patterns. Because these mesh acrylics use some heavy It is made of overlapping hyperbolic cone-shaped materials, so it can create the strongest structure while using the least amount of material. In addition, it is bundled with filaments that are "wrapped" inside and outside, so there are no ordinary snowflakes at all. of fragility.
Beesley hid many 3D printed lighting parts and glass products online. The glass products contain oils, inorganic chemicals and other solutions to form a kind of chemical skin.
Beesley is the director of the Living Architecture Systems Group and a professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo. The core of his research is "whether architecture can truly "live"", which means introducing artificial intelligence into every stage of design. , creating an organic environment that can repair itself or respond to the outside world. It sounds really complicated and profound, but for us as simple viewers, it should be easier to regard his works as aesthetic works inspired by science fiction novels.
