Digital Adaptation of the »Hypercubic Glass«Translation of the Design Principles by Student Seminars

Abstract

The name »hypercubic glass« describes an interdisciplinary design project of the artist Salvador Dalí and the architect Emilio Pérez Piñero, which never has been realized. It is a kinetic space room installation, that separates the former stage from the planned inner courtyard of the museum of the Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueras. This project had a special significance for Emilio Pérez Piñero‘s work in that he succeeded in merging skin and skeleton in a single folding system. Together with students of a master’s course of the Universität Siegen, the design principle of the kinetic artefact is analysed, adapted to today’s fabrication possibilities, and optimised in an interactive process of model building and numerical calculations. For this purpose, the relevant patents of Emilio Pérez Piñero are studied, as well as additional literature. New methods of digital production are used in model making, such as laser cutting and additive manufacturing. Students learn the importance of combining creative skills with technological knowledge. They are introducing themselves to the operation of deployable structures based on the knowledge that Pérez Piñero poured into his patents to protect his inventions both in Spain and in the United States of America. The queried and trained competences during the seminar are diverse and partly contradictory. Starting with research through understanding to transformation, students learn to recognize technical potential and apply them by themselves.