The installation designed by Andrew Saunders is composed of 1,224 folded, developable surfaces (surfaces that can be unrolled onto a plane without distortion) digitally-generated and fabricated from sheets of translucent high-density polyethylene. It is inspired by the affects luminosity, translucency, and weightlessness transposed from The Hyde Collection’s painting of The Annunciation by the Italian Renaissance master, Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510). The Rensselaer fabrication challenges the Cartesian geometry and symmetry of the gallery space as it fluctuates between display and partition. It provides an affective environment that influences circulation as well as divides, unites and exhibits the Z-print models.

Building Futures is an exhibition at The Hyde Collection running from February 11 to April 15. The exhibit presents architectural proposals designed by Rensselaer Architecture School faculty and students as an intellectual investigation stimulated by long-range planning activities for The Hyde Collection and its campus.

Faculty-led teams of students generated six proposals during a four-day charrette. Charrette is a term derived from the nineteenth-century École des Beaux-Arts in Paris for an intense creative session designed to focus multiple teams on a particular problem in compressed time and space. At the end of four days of all-day sketching, modeling and brainstorming, each team delivered a master planning strategy for expansion of The Hyde campus.

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