Nebula Prototype: Liminal Architecture

Sagmeister and Walsh: The Beauty Project

Vienna, AT - 2018

Nebula Prototype was a sculpture group featured in the travelling exhibition, ‘Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty’ presented by MAK, Vienna; Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; and the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG). The exhibition was curated by graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh, bringing together over sixty objects spanning all disciplines and various cultures and eras, exploring the concept of beauty and its persisting influence on the human psyche.

Nebula Prototype consisted of a cave-like cluster of suspended, densely massed spheres and shells formed with diagrid lattices of metal and acrylic. These nest-like structures were encrusted with glistening glass flasks carrying chemical solutions. The dense grouping of material was surrounded by a cloud of lace-like skeletal membrane swirling around and above the suspended spheres. The project used fabrication methods of cross-linked double-shell scaffold systems, exploring resilient, lightweight construction techniques of the future. Just as Sagmeister and Walsh argue that beauty is ‘more than just a superficial strategy’, the experimental forms featured in Nebula Prototype suggest that immersive beauty can be generated through intense repetition of meticulously crafted simple components, creating an extraordinarily rich and complex whole.

Museum fur angewandte Kunst, October 24, 2018 – March 31, 2019
Vienna, AT

Museum Angewandte Kunst, May 11, 2019 – September 15, 2019
Frankfurt am Main, DE

Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG), December 15, 2019 – April 26, 2020
Hamburg, DE