ABSTRACT
Matter Design's premise for this project was to create a sauna like form which combined two distinct material typologies: one glass-fiber-reinforced concrete (GFRC) and Baltic birch plywood. The installation was suspended from the ceiling by a beam. Copper tubes inside the walls of the installation enable hot and cool water to circulate through the structure. The studio produced the voluptuous forms by using a machined mold made of expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam. The foam mold was then coated in a water-based surfacing compound and cast with GFRC. GFRC was built up to a nominal thickness and allowed to dry before the molds were removed, leaving the smooth surface of the final piece. The geometry of this project is driven primarily by a series of Boolean operations. The production of this installation was completed by first using a 7-axis robotic arm with a large hot-wire cutter attached to its wrist to create approximations of the geometries in EPS foam.
