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DESCRIPTION
No two disciplines seem more dissimilar on the surface than architecture and astronomy. The former is engaged with the built environment and social issues, while the latter involves the discovery, observation and measurement of celestial bodies. Yet both are rooted in mathematical systems such as ratios and calculus, and both demand of their practitioners an ability to visualize in three dimensions and a mastery of the physics of space.
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The Constellation Screen in Three Sections is a sculptural exploration of the interconnections between architecture and astronomy: the use of point and line to denote three-dimensional space; the reliance on ratios, especially the golden mean, to map the dimensions of a building or the structure of space; the starscape as the backdrop to the planet and the screen as the backdrop to an earthbound space.
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Eight feet high and thirty feet long in its entirety, the Constellation Screen was commissioned by the Formica Corporation to introduce a newly developed aluminum laminate to the public. The purpose of the project was to present the new material in a form that would redefine the popular perception of Formica - in effect taking it off the kitchen counter and placing it in a radically different context.
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Unfolding like an astronomical chart, the screen was designed as a freestanding architectonic sculpture with ten hinged panels arrayed in three hierarchical sections of three, four and three. Each panel is composed of three horizontally stacked laminate sheets, two-by-three feet wide, with cutout patterns of constellations. The perforated surfaces, which were created with Waterjet technology, are based on celestial maps yet are assembled as a collage, creating a poetic evocation rather than an accurate depiction of the night sky. This deliberate distortion recalls the remark by the astronomer Johannes Kepler in his 1619 tract, The Harmony of the World (Harmonice Mundi), that the planets orbited the sun in ellipses rather than perfect circles, a movement that Kepler interpreted in terms of musical notation, because the celestial imperfection enabled God to make better music. The screen's telescoping form, while serving a function as an enclosure or backdrop, hints at the infinite unfolding of the nocturnal vastness etched across its surface.
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The reflective quality of the laminate, composed of thin aluminum sheets compressed within interfacing plastic film, lends itself to the idea of light, which the screen embodies in its iconography and manipulates as a physical entity. The vertical planes of aluminum laminate reflect light or block it, depending on the direction of the source. When backlit, the metal edges of the cutout constellations glow with an intensely bright halo, and hundreds of shafts of light pierce the screen's perforations, dappling its shadow with a projected starscape not unlike the illusion of a planetarium's night sky.
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