The boolean-created "Situation Room" at the Storefront for Art + Architecture

Immersed in a neon bubblegum pink shell, walking through the Situation Room gives viewers a fascinating perspective of the digital and physical environments. Designed by MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY in collaboration with sound artist Jana Winderen, Situation Room was commissioned by the Storefront for Art and Architecture NYC for the WorldWide Storefront initiative launch.

The installation -- which was created by 20 spheres of various sizes fused by boolean operations -- questions how we experience our built environments. The structure's porous shell, the structural nodes, and Winderen's sound composition further add to the engaging atmosphere.

The Situation Room is currently at the Storefront for Art and Architecture NYC until November 21.

Dig into the project details that the designers shared with us below.

Project description:

"Situation Room by MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY is a light-weight, ultra-thin self-supported shell structure augmented by artist Jana Winderen's engineered sounds. The overall form is an aggregate of twenty spheres of incremental diameters, combined to create an envelope of experiential tension, a sort of sublime dialogue between the comfort of the known and an uneasy interaction with the unknown. The resultant morphology resonates with a series of distributed transducers and lighting sources playing out through streams of porosity derived from structural stress flows across the elements."

"The envelope is created out of boolean operations merging the spheres and lending rigidity through the inherent double curvature, while best allowing for storage through nesting of incremental radii. The inverted curvature of smoothed sphere-intersections provide additional reinforcement while blending with a series of internal rhizomatic networks derived from convergent sphere points."

"The internal networks subdivide and recombine, eventually resolving into columns that carry down-loads to the ground,. The apparent complexity of the internal morphology is a direct result of the dense aggregate of spheres, creating a rich repertoire of spatial conditions exemplified by compression/expansion, hierarchies and branching, knotting, coves..."

"Stress flows from structural analysis are used for directional fitness by a series of distributedagents crawling its morphology. Their trails are eventually materialized into non-linear aluminum stripes, while gaps within the force flows are translated into aperture."

"The spatial experience is augmented through ten-channels of resonant sounds propagated across the structural surface, operating here as a membrane for distributed transducers. The system set-up provides a large scale inhabitable instrument-apparatus of play for both composer and visitor."

"Spatial envelope, acoustic-membrane, structural-performance, assembly-parts and distributed lighting are unified and amalgamated through a coat of neon-effect, blurring one's perception of the known."

Project details and credits

Situation Room
An installation by MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY and Jana Winderen

Installation specifics:
Skin area: 168,520 sq.in.
Spheroids: 20
Flairs: 21
Structural Nodes: 26
Columns: 3
Unique parts: 1673
Lights source: 28
Transducers: 10

Sound composition by Jana Winderen
Computation/Assembly by MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY
Fabrication by bengal.fierro
Commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture
With the support of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

Click the thumbnails below for additional photos and diagrams.