University of Louisiana at Lafayette steel sculpture

NOTE: This project occurred prior to Matt Flynn founding Flynn A&D in 2006.

Back in 2004, the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette decided to construct projects to give its students some practical knowledge of current technologies. Corey Saft, the faculty member leading the project, contacted his friend Scott Enge, a welder and the head of the metal shop at Marmol Radziner + Associates in California. When the initial design for a steel sculpture fell through, Enge asked his co-worker, Matt Flynn, to help create a new design.

The resulting form was made to display the potential of software to free design thinking from an orthogonal predisposition, to use CAD/CAM capabilities (computer-aided design and manufacturing), to integrate laser-cutting donated by a local fabricator, and to gain an understanding of welding. The weaving of the stainless steel rods through the flat plate ribs demonstrated how multiple surfaces could be implied with overlapping curves. The 3D digital model generated the 2D cutting files and a spreadsheet of the rod lengths, showing the students that a complex form could be broken down into simple instructions.

Enge and Flynn traveled to Louisiana and helped direct the students with the construction. Over a long weekend, the sculpture was erected on an open terrace of Fletcher Hall on campus.

See the video below for a time-lapse of the installation: