Customs House Sydney Installation, NSW Building, Architect, Photos, Design, Pictures

Customs House Sydney : Architecture Installation

Green Void – Installation – design by LAVA

28 Jan 2009

Customs House Sydney Installation

2009

Design: LAVA

Photos: Peter Murphy

A spectacular architectural installation of green Lycra inspired by the geometries of plants, spider webs and soap bubbles has taken over five levels of the central atrium of Customs House in Sydney, Australia.

Green Void is a 20-metre high, suspended site-specific installation by international group LAVA, using the latest digital fabrication and engineering techniques.

The potential for naturally evolving systems such as snowflakes, spider webs and soap bubbles for new building typologies and structures has continued to fascinate LAVA – the geometries in nature create both efficiency and beauty. Their luxury residential tower for Michael Schumacher in Abu Dhabi which starts construction later this year, for example, is based on the design of a snowflake.

Green Void, based on minimal surface tension, consists of a tensioned Lycra material, digitally patterned and custom-tailored for the space. They wanted to see how far they could take the idea of creating more space with less material, filling 3000 cubic metres, the equivalent of 8 million cola cans, with a minimal surface of 300 square metres and weighing only 40 kilograms.