Planning Out My Solids:
Center – Mirrored Star Tetrahedron (Fire)
Middle – Pipe Tetrahedron (Fire)
Exterior – Open Wood Dodecahedron (Life)
I was immediately drawn to the Tetrahedron when beginning this project. The simplicity and symmetry of the shape was very appealing to me aesthetically, as well as the fact that it is a representation of fire. I wanted the inner shapes of my project to act as an inner fire that was being fed by the life that surrounds it. When choosing materials for each of the shapes, it was important that I felt all the materials came together in a appealing, as well as meaningful way. I chose mirror for the Star Tetrahedron because I wanted all of the different faces to be reflective like an inner spark of fire. I chose silver piping for the Tetrahedron because I wanted the silver metallic feeling to be consistent in both fire shapes. The wire used to connect everything was also a shiny metallic silver. For the Dodecahedron, I wanted to use a different material than the mirror and silver piping because this shape represents life. I chose wood because it is a more natural material. After all the wood was once part of a living tree. I wanted the final project to only represent fire, or elements that feed fire. Therefore I did not include the Hexahedron, Octahedron, and Icosahedron.
Star Tetrahedron:
I began by constructing a paper model of my inner solid, the Star Tetrahedron. This was to have a 3D model of my first solid to make sure, I was getting the size I wanted.
I cut the mirrored plexiglass by hand with a plexi-cutter into small triangles that when grouped together would come to form all of the points of the Star Tetrahedron.
Then each tiny triangle was tied together by feeding wire through small holes drilled into the corner of each piece. As the Star Tetrahedron began to form I found that had cutting my pieces was a mistake. The small imperfections in my cutting rendered each triangular piece slightly different from one another. When assembling them all together, the differences were magnified leaving my final shape, asymmetrical. I found that by leaving the wire ties slightly loose, the shape was able to settle into the most secure and symmetrical position possible.
Tetrahedron:
I scaled the measurements of the Star Tetrahedron up to get Tetrahedron measurements that would create a shape that would incase the previous one. I scaled it large enough that the Star Tetrahedron would be suspended by wire in the center of the Tetrahedron, rather than nested snugly in each corner. My thought behind this was to blur the fact that the Star Tetrahedron was not perfectly symmetrical. This was the easiest solid to construct. I cut 6 equal pieces of thin silver piping, and fed the silver wire through each connecting them into an open Tetrahedron.
Dodecahedron:
The first step in creating the final shape, was to find the right measurements so that the Dodecahedron would perfectly encase the Tetrahedron. Using a compass, ruler, and measurements from the previous solid, I found the size Pentagon that would be the faces of my Dodecahedron.
Now that I knew the sizing of my Dodecagon, it was time to cut out the pieces from the material. To avoid the same problem I had cutting pieces for my Star Tetrahedron, I chose to use a laser cutter, to cut the 12 Pentagons I would need to construct the Dodecahedron.
(See video below.)
The laser cutter burned the edges of the wood pieces which I chose to incorporate into my design. Because the final object represents a fire within, it made sense that this fire would burn the edges of the object incasing it.
Like the two shapes before it, the Dodecahedron pieces were tied together with silver wire. This shape came together much easier than the Star Tetrahedron because each pentagon was exactly the same. It was especially important for this final solid to be as accurate as possible because it needed to snugly nest the Tetrahedron inside it. Also, this being the final and outer shape would have nothing around it to hide imperfections.
Final Nested Polyhedra:
Final Nested Polyhedra Drawings:
