Commissioned by the Estonian Center for Architecture, the project is an exploration of three different kinds of plastic – biodegradable, recyclable, and disposable – brought together by parametric form. Designed to circulate long-distance, the resulting installation conforms to the dimensional limitations set forth by international shipping standards, while containing a set of nonstandard objects within. Four volumes, measuring 0.5 m x 0.5 m x 0.5 m each, effectively serve as packaging material during shipping, but are designed to unfold into a continuous ground condition. Thin translucent sheets—cast from custom-made bioplastic and pressed between the nested volumes—are bent to form a conjoined vaulted structure tailored to the differentiated geometry of the ground beneath. Hidden inside is also a set of eight serially differentiated 3D-printed models whose form is determined by the geometries of all the other constituent elements.

Project assistants: Mitchell Peterson (design and production); Alex Wu, Heather Sutherland (production)