The sculpture was made in response to the stairwell and the light shaft at its core. It is attached to the building but has to have integrity and be virtually self-supporting. This consideration was an important contributor to 

 final form. It is suspended from the skylight and supported from the floor, connecting at the mid-point where the largest polyhedron lies.

 is a light-weight reply to the fixity of a column, an obelisk, or even Brancusi’s ‘Endless Column’: all of these convey an impression of stability and make a solid bridge between above and below, whereas 

 evokes a more dynamic relationship between matter and energy. This column is made of a myriad of polyhedra linked as a chain and they cluster in places of high tension. The balls reflect the world around them. This ball and element construct is used to model molecular structure but here is used without illustrating any particular molecule and eliminates all symmetry.

When making this work, what intrigued me was the reconciliation of the organic and the geometric. This geometry is a characteristic of foam structures, a universal and economic way to structure space: bubble geometries exist in the pith of desert grasses and in our bones. Its random yet principled matrices have been assumed into parametric design.

, 2015, 2016, variable square section stainless steel bar and 60 mm stainless steel balls, overall size: 1706 × 321 × 341 cm. Permanent installation, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Photograph by Peter Vanderwarker.

, 2016, variable square section stainless steel bar and 60 mm stainless steel balls, 1706 × 321 × 341 cm. Fabrication, Summit Metal Fabricators, New Hampshire, USA.

, 2016, variable square section stainless steel bar and 60 mm stainless steel balls, 1706 × 321 × 341 cm. Work in Progress.

, 2016, variable square section stainless steel bar and 60 mm stainless steel balls, 1706 × 321 × 341 cm. Installing, MIT Cambridge.

Chord, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts

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