Mathematica

Charles and Ray Eames were mostly known for their iconic furniture designs, but they were also known for a toy kit of slotted building cards, and their landmark 1961 exhibition entitled Mathematica, So when San Francisco’s Exploratorium restored and relaunched Mathematica, they asked if I would create a project that would honor both the cards and the exhibit. Mathematica, as an exhibit, provides visuals to many mathematic and geometric concepts, such as the bell curve and the mobius strip—it provides ways for people to understand math in a visual way. For my contribution, I decided to show that cards can support huge amounts of weight when arranged in my very special geometric pattern, and also that those same arrangements can be used to create almost any shape or type of building. One of the highlights was a wheelbarrow loaded with more than a hundred pounds of material, supported by a freestanding house of cards (no tape, no glue!). We placed a very thick sheet of clear plastic on top of the card structure to distribute the weight of the wheelbarrow across all the cards evenly. And because it was clear, you could see all the cards in their geometric arrangement, working together to support the weight.