ERRATIC [BY NORELL/RODHE]

NORELL/RODHE'S EXHIBITION FOR HELSINKI DESIGN WEEK HOSTED BY ADDLAB

Project Design: Norell/Rodhe [Daniel Norell, Einar Rodhe]
Team: Hseng Tai Lintner, Stefan Svedberg, Axel Wolgers
ADD Team: Kivi Sotamaa
Fabrication: MEmballageteknik AB
Type: Installation, exhibition, panel discussion
Location: Aalto University Digital Design Laboratory Helsinki, Finland
Collaboration period: June 2nd - September 18 2013
Exhibition period: September 19 - October 17 2013
Size: 3 x 3 x 3 m
Support: Architecture in the Making
Links: Norell/Rodhe, ADDLAB
Published: suckerPUNCH

Excerpt from press release:
One of architectures tasks has always been to bridge the gap between representation and construction. In a time where anything can be precisely reproduced digitally, Erratic charts architectural opportunities that arise in the glitch between geometrical information and architectural object. The installation, situated in ADDLAB’s double height café space, takes its cues from the intimidating massing of an erratic block, commonly found all over the Nordic region. Its irregular, meandering surface is designed as an analog battle of forces between a thick, semi-rigid surface and a rigid, inner armature. The exhibition continues upstairs, featuring smaller variations that have been designed using digital simulation of the same material forces that shape the installation.

Erratic is designed to have direct sensory appeal, but it also seeks to incorporate a wider set of less immediate experiences. Simultaneously strange and familiar, its massing and materiality evoke a multitude of ambiguous associations that address our perception of nature. Fake, yet authentic, it may look as if it was shaped by natural forces, but is at the same time clearly designed and manmade. Its soft surface alludes to patterns of crevices normally found on rocks, but is also reminiscent of a turbulent fluid medium.