A temporary installation on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, designed and built as part of the Design Biennial Boston 2015.

Although the exterior resists legibility, glimpses of a viewing hole signal that there is more to see up close. As visitors circumnavigate the installation, they encounter the other viewing holes that are calibrated to various heights. The interior dislocates–visually, acoustically, and spatially–as one’s head enters a space separate from one’s body. The booleaned intersections between pods create a surprising, cathedral-like space. The texture and patterning of the fiberglass bears traces of the fabrication process, the way one might see formwork traces in concrete, but here transformed by the thinness and translucency. One might catch glimpses of (or overhear) others, in what becomes a strangely intimate public enclosure. Visitors become part of the installation itself, a spectacle for viewers who are farther away.

Grove extends Joel Lamere’s research into the use of inflatable molds for composites, from which GLD invented a wet lay-up method of resin-infused fiberglass tape over tailored, inflatable molds. Each of the twelve conic pods was formed separately, with the intersections between them inscribed through computational simulation of the inflation process. The pods were then cut and joined after curing, creating a single composite shell structure. The resultant form is as thin as 2mm in most places–incredibly light but rigid.

Project team: GLD (Joel Lamere + Cynthia Gunadi), Sophia Chesrow, Grigori Enikolopov, Zain Karsan, Dohyun Lee, Elizabeth Galvez