2023 Bridges Conference Art Exhibition

Kodai Nakagawa, Tomohiro Tachi

Artists

Kodai Nakagawa

Architecture Student

Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo

Tokyo, Japan

yoshikoisaburokoko0124@g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Tomohiro Tachi

Professor

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo

Tokyo, Japan

tachi@idea.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp

https://origami.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Statement

I have been attracted to the beautifully curved shapes of minimal surfaces. I want to not only see them in computer graphics but also hold them in my hands and see them more deeply. I have made some of the minimal surfaces, such as helicoid and catenoid, with bubble solution, but I found it difficult to make the Costa surface, a kind of minimal surfaces, in the same way. I started to seek a novel way to make a sculpture of the Costa surface in the integrative arts and sciences class "Individual and Group" led by Tomohiro Tachi and Asao Tokolo at the University of Tokyo in 2022.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Wire Construction of the Costa Surface and a Torus'

Wire Construction of the Costa Surface and a Torus

100.0 x 70.0 x 70.0 cm

stainless wire rope and metal fastener

2022

Additional info

Costa surface is one of minimal surfaces. We have been fascinated with its beautiful shape, but we found it difficult to make it in reality. We came up with the idea that by making several curves drawn on the Costa surface using wire ropes, a sculpture like a skeleton of the Costa surface can be created. Due to the topology of the Costa surface and the conformal property of the map, we can obtain two curves on the Costa surface, which cross with each other many times and always orthogonally, forming an orthogonal grid on the Costa surface. We also made a sculpture of a torus that can be conformally mapped to the Costa surface to demonstrate the geometric connection between the surfaces.