Notes

A stimulating game of perception
Integrating natural elements into computer-aided design, Orproject?s latest and award-winning sculptural art installation that explores the medium of light as a material. Architecture and design practice, Orproject with offices in London, Beijing and New Delhi is definitely on the threshold of exploring cutting-edge advanced geometries to bring about a high-end aesthetic with an an ecologic agenda.

Their latest private commission for a 200-plus-year-old home garden in Dusseldorf, Germany, is a sculptural tree ? today's intervention that mimics its natural counterparts ? perhaps initiating many a dialogue on life and its evolving philosophies. Utilizing the analogy of the process of photosynthesis in plants, where plants grow towards the source of light and the veins within their leaves supply every cell with nutrients ? Endless Truck that results in overall growth of the plants; the architects create a tree-trunk-like installation with a stainless-steel surface, set onto which are side-glowing fiber-optic cables that appear like the veins of Ivy on a tree.

Expressing their architectural approach to ecological design with a visual narrative, playing on slight of eye in a stimulating game of perceptions, the look is developed using computational algorithms. It employs a 3mm thick layer of CNC-bent and CNC-cut stainless that wraps around bent rings, giving it its angular form. Discreetly threading fine cables through miniscule apertures found on the surface, fibre-optic cables are linked with the tree-like sculptural form. Precision underlines the geometry and also the execution.

The effect: a self-supporting, hollow, metal, colour-changing tree weighing approx. 800kg that glows in the dark! Christening it Photoptosis ? stylized from photosynthesis and fibre-optics ? the making of the art involved first applying the algorithm to the stainless-steel structure and then replicating it with the incorporation of fibre-optic cables. ?To be able to have the intricate branching appear mostly on leading of the tree, its growth was calculated in a non-Euclidean, warped space,? informs the firm?s Delhi Partner, Rajat Sodhi, who spent three weeks to set up it on site.

Throughout the day, the lighting system is nearly invisible, and the stainless-steel tree forms a prominent center point. However, when dawn sets in, the glowing veins slowly begin to emerge, until the tree fully disappears into the darkness of night and only the vein structure stands otherworldly in the garden.
Website: https://www.gamegab.com/play/16597/Endless-Truck/