Silver Crocodile

University of Kentucky
College of Design
School of Architecture

ARC 599: Spring 2014 Design Elective

Fabricating Play

The graduate design elective, Fabricating Play, explores issues of iterative modes of construction and user interaction through research, discussion, and fabrication over the course of 14 weeks. The class was charged with developing full-scale interactive objects to be deployed in the 2014 Beaux Arts Ball. Specific to the theme of the course is to consider the potential of a series of related objects that develop a unified spatial character to be deployed in variety of contexts.

Through an evolutionary process of selection and synthesis of the students’ proposals, two final designs emerged. The resulting constructs, Silver Crocodile and White Warp took the form of full-scale installations generated out of systematic assemblies of off-the-shelf and digitally manufactured components.

Hg-162 (a.k.a. Silver Crocodile) is a thickened inhabitable landscape comprised of tessellated silvery pillows hovering 18” off the ground and measuring twelve feet square. Inhabitants can crawl on and relax in its soft hills and valleys and its units can be easily slid into a variety of configurations. The title derives from the number of its pillowed tiles and their resemblance to the chemical element Mercury (its symbol, “Hg”) when aggregated.

This project is made possible by the Beaux Arts Ball Foundation.

Participants
Nicole Challita, Nicole Groneck, Addison Hughes, Hans Koesters, Sarah Mohr, Sadie Pena, Christoph Shoenlein, Anne Schwab, Hannah Sellers, Joshua Wilkinson

With special thanks to Hannah Sellers and Nicole Challita for assistance in organizing the final representation.

Photography
GLINTstudios

Image Gallery
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