adnan agha
interdisciplinary designer & artist
big mussels
within our constructions studio, we were challenged to choose a sample from the risd nature lab and create a structural system inspired by it. my sample was a microscopic image of mussel gills, shown right.
in trying to translate this image to a physical system, i treated the image as a sort of plan view. the dark lines seemed to suggest flowing walls, perhaps with some kind of poles supporting them. i made a series of study models pursuing various approaches and came to a flexible, dynamic structural system that could be adjusted by people directly from the ground.
as apart so together
i imagined flowing layers pulling apart from each other, the space between them creating room for inhabitation.
but as the walls are pulled apart, they are bound to each other and naturally try to come back together. this see saw of forces became the guiding core of the concept moving forward.
forced
i’ve long been fascinated with trying to use force to strengthen, rather than stress, the systems it acts upon. in this case, i was interested in created a system that could be pulled into different configurations by using various weights. i also experimented with using elastic bands to pull the mesh walls apart, adding layers of options to the configuration.
pulled apart
this final model used fishing wire strung to the corners to pull apart layers of tulle. the magnitude of the pull is controlled by the weight placed in the center, hung from the fishing line itself.
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