HEDGE

Lavender Tessmer, Jason Butz, Nathaniel Elberfeld

Project Type: Temporary Installation | September - December 2017

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis | St. Louis, MO

PROJECT TEAM | Evan Bobrow, Marija Draskic, Yuchen Song, Michael Zhou

FABRICATION ASSISTANTS | Sam Bell-Hart, Finnegan Roy-Nyline, Greg Smolkovich

HEDGE is comprised of thousands of pounds of plastics, repurposed byproducts of a local industrial process, creating a synthetic “vegetation” in the courtyard of the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) in St. Louis, Missouri. To help offset weight, we designed an ultra-light netting of resin-impregnated carbon fiber strands that have incredible tensile strength. For a fabrication strategy, we looked to bobbin lace weaving, a tradition of making lace developed in the sixteenth century in which several pairs of strings are twisted together and share long edges to create friction and strength to hold the pattern.

The morphing carbon fiber diagrid responds to the site context, desired visual densities, and structural considerations then translated the pattern onto plywood panels and hand-wove the fibers using the bobbin lace technique. The result is a hybrid digital and analogue craft process that capitalizes on the efficiency of digital design and the dexterity and social aspects of handcrafted work.