February 2020 - Zurich-based architect and programmer Michael Hansmeyer recently premiered his latest project “Muqarna Mutation” at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. For a “Future and the Arts” exhibition, the museum curators commissioned Muqarna Mutation, which is an algorithmically designed, robotically fabricated, 6-m-wide muqarna (elaborate ornamental vaultings). “Muqarna Mutation” re-analyzes historical muqarna archetypes and explores how, in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, computation and robotic fabrication can bring the splendor of such a rule-based geometric art into the future. A selective subdivision algorithm generates hundreds of thousands of tiles set among dozens of tiers to create an extravagant ornamental transition from column to ceiling. Robots refine and ennoble a mass-produced industrial product—aluminum profiles—into an elaborate structural ensemble: 15,000 individual aluminum tubes are suspended from a robotically milled, tiered base.

Photo: Kioku Keizo, Mori Art Museum