In Memoriam Fabien Vienne and Reza Sarhangi: Bridges Finland 2016’s Zometool Barn Raising Events

The Zometool Penticosido and the DNA sculpture: In Memoriam Fabien Vienne and Reza Sarhangi

The construction of Zometool Penticosido from more than 7000 pieces took place in 2016 August in Finland, during the whole length of Bridges 2016 conference. Children, scholars and artists have participated together in this ambitious project, which was initiated by close friends and collaborators of the recently passed, world-renowned designer Fabien Vienne and friends and colleagues of Bridges president Reza SarhangiPenticosido was a temporal sculpture for a month in the University of Jyväskylä. After taking it apart, its 7000 pieces are available for Finnish children in Experience Workshop’s events all over in Finland and for students and researchers of the University of Jyväskylä.

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The international Zometool-community and the Bridges Organization mourns two outstanding friends: Bridges president Reza Sarhangi (1952-2016), who right from the beginning supported the idea of Zometool “barn raising” events at Bridges conferences and Fabien Vienne (1925-2016), who contributed the largest Zometool barn raisings ever.

The Penticosido Zometool construction was a modest tribute to Vienne‘s luminous 70-year design career, crowned with his last solo exhibit at the Chaillot Palace in Paris. The exhibit has provided a panoramic view of his excellence in architecture and urban planning, graphics, furniture and game design. Vienne created fabulous geometrical games and co-designed Zometool’s ‘green struts’. He also notably developed a 3D fractal ‘universe’ of Zometool, the “cubic fuzzy precision”, which spawned the Zometool Pentigloo construction in Bridges Coimbra 2011, Portugal and the Pentidisc in Bridges Enschede 2013, The Netherlands.

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These monstrous, but friendly Zometool giants were assembled by the dedicated enthusiasm of many dozens of Bridges participants. The previous constructions’ main motives were integrated in Bridges 2016’s Penticosido. From this aspect, Penticosido’s main aim was to offer an opportunity to various structural explorations both for mathematicians and non-mathematicians, and also to provide a model for the active studying of Fabien’s complex constructions. With Penticosido, we hoped to re-awake interest towards the richness of quasiperiodic tessellations, built from a visually recognizable “exceptionally singular” center.

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Teaching different subjects for architecture students, especially descriptive geometry and computer aided design, as well as scientific research of connections between art and geometry gave the idea to László Vörös to construct the first large Zometool model of DNA. The geometric modeling of the molecule was restricted by symmetry properties of Zometool and some practical demands. It has to stand alone, require less types of elements and the structure could be separated to repeatable parts, easy to build even by children. See Vörös’ paper on the project:

http://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2016/bridges2016-435.pdf

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Now 7000 Zometool pieces are available for Finnish children in Experience Workshop’s events!

Penticosido was a temporal sculpture for a month in the Agora Building of University of Jyväskylä. After taking it apart in September, its 7000 pieces are available for Finnish children in Experience Workshop’s events all over in Finland and for students and researchers of the University of Jyväskylä.

If you are interested to have Experience Workshop events in your school, please contact us: info@experienceworkshop.org

Penticosido Project leader: Samuel Verbiese / Initiator: Jim Hausman / Creative Team: Amina Buhler-Allen, Jean-Marc Castera, Kristof Fenyvesi, Paul Hildebrandt, Carlos Neumann, Marc Pelletier, Scott Vorthmann.

Zometool DNA Project leader: László Vörös.

The projects were supported by Zometool USA and Experience Workshop Math-Art Movement, Finland.

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2 thoughts on “In Memoriam Fabien Vienne and Reza Sarhangi: Bridges Finland 2016’s Zometool Barn Raising Events

  • Thanks to all participants and visitors, with the hope this can trigger interest, for Fabien’s outstanding work, Reza’s beloved Bridges conferences and magnificent Zometool, by mathematicians and visual artists !

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