A+ Online 2021

Courtyard Curvahedra

By Kendall Curlee
Photos by Chieko Hara, Emily Baker and Whit Pruitt

Next time you visit us here on campus, check out the eye-popping campus landmark installed last summer. Our Curvahedra, a spherical steel structure 12 feet in diameter, brings beauty and some exciting ideas in mathematics and sustainable construction to our quiet courtyard here at Gearhart Hall. 

The new landmark was made possible by the generosity of G. David and Jane B. Gearhart, who funded $50,000 to cover site preparation, fabrication, construction, installation and an honorarium for the principal designers. 

“Jane and I are delighted to support this initiative and to have followed it through its development. The sculpture is beautiful, but it also embodies sophisticated ideas about geometry and space,” Chancellor Emeritus Gearhart said. “That seems like a good fit for Gearhart Hall.”

The sculpture was designed by British artist Edmund Harriss, alongside compatriot and collaborator Carl Smith, professor of landscape architecture, and a group of honors students. Honors alumna and assistant professor of architecture Emily Baker solved the puzzle of constructing it.

Harriss is a clinical assistant professor of mathematics in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and the sculpture is based on his Curvahedra puzzle system, a set of paper pieces that helps users understand how flat pieces can be made to curve into a ball — a bit of magic that can be explained by the Gauss-Bonnet theorem. 

“General relativity assumes that the three-dimensional space (or the four-dimensional spacetime) that we live in is itself curved,” Harriss said. “This huge idea fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe, yet we can start to appreciate it with a simple toy.”

Edmund Harriss

“I love the elegance. The mathematical idea is so clearly translated into reality.”

– Edmund Harriss

Dedication Ceremony

Friday, October 15, 2021, 3:30 p.m.
Gearhart Hall Courtyard

MaquetteLaunched by an Honors College Seminar

The idea for a Curvahedra writ large was sparked by an Honors College Signature Seminar in August 2018 titled Place in Mind, which Harriss taught with Smith.

Charged with activating the dormant Gearhart courtyard space, honors students majoring in engineering, art, biology, geology, architecture and landscape architecture used drawing, games, poetry and mathematics to understand the existing qualities of the courtyard and speculate on what it might become in the future.

The honors students explored many options, with several working throughout the fall of 2018 to refine ideas. This process culminated in an exhibition and proposal for the courtyard Curvahedra to create a sense of place and to foster interaction. The interdisciplinary group relished the opportunity to make their mark on campus:

“It’s kind of rare that I get to exercise the creative side of my brain in my coursework,” said Abby Rhodes, who completed a degree in geosciences last May.

Honors Alumna Leads Construction

Translating a palm-sized paper model into a 12-foot-diameter steel sculpture is no small task. Enter assistant professor of architecture and Honors College Bodenhamer Fellowship alumna Emily Baker (B.Arch., summa cum laude, ’04). 

She took her first welding class at Batesville High School and honed those skills on design-build projects at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.

Following graduation, she practiced architecture, taught and earned a master’s degree in architecture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she began exploring the digital side of steel fabrication using the school’s plasma cutter. 

Currently Baker leads the Fay Jones School’s digital steel lab. In the spring and summer of 2019, she worked to figure out how to morph a paper Curvahedra into a massive steel sculpture. Eventually she hit on an internal spine that provides the necessary bracing without compromising the piece’s visual impact. She then developed a jig, or clamping setup, that allows flat parts to be successively attached, or “zipped,” into curving steel forms. This jig method pairs with Harriss’ computational formulations to create a highly efficient and economical construction system that they call Zip Form. 

“This is pretty exciting to us — to create something this large in a curved shape, produced at reasonable cost, that’s a feat,” Baker said.

“I love the elegance,” Harriss enthused. “The mathematical idea is so clearly translated into reality.”

Their Zip Form system may have applications that reach far beyond our courtyard. The U of A’s Tech Ventures team has filed a provisional patent application on their behalf, and Baker and Harriss have met with researchers who are interested in using their method to shape concrete structures with less material. “As the primary structural material for nearly all of the global south, reducing concrete has huge implications for cost and material savings,” Baker said. “It’s super exciting to see this project result in both art and very practical environmental solutions at the same time!” 

Modus-Studio-Welding