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Dynamic Windows

LOCATION: SUNY Stony Brook, New York, USA (2010)
CLIENT: Stony Brook Foundation

The Simon Center for Geometry and Physics at State University of New York, Stony Brook commissioned Hoberman to create a dynamic façade.

Serving as both the building’s artistic centerpiece and as a functional piece of shading, the installation is a floor-to-ceiling composition. Hoberman designed each panel to have a unique geometric pattern of perforations that mirrors the research focus of the building’s resident scientists and mathematicians. As these patterns align and diverge, the visual effect is of sparse geometric patterns of hexagons, circles, squares, and triangles that blossom into an opaque mesh. The result is a kinetic surface that spans 38 square meters and imbues the building with the functional capacity to dynamically change its opacity and sculpt the quality of light within.

A second, complementary installation, an artistic steel gate, was created for an adjoining art gallery. After gallery hours, the gate’s static perforated steel panels create an undulating field of curved, intersecting lines. By day, these panels cleanly fold together to create a three-dimensional sculpture within the gallery. Parametrically generated by the planar slicing of a twisted cubic form, the stacked form creates twisting, open volumes a play on positive and negative space while also having dynamic sightlines that change as visitors walk around it.