Iron Cloud
In October 2009, students of the University of Technology in Vienna erected their "Eisen-wolke" (Iron Cloud) in the city. It was the outcome of a design task and of investigations into principles derived from nature and geometry and how these could be translated into a modular spatial structure. The Iron Cloud consists of 624 sheet-steel tetrahedra with a side length of 60 cm and was made and bolted together by the students - without CNC support - within a period of four weeks. The Paul Schatz "Würfel" (1929), a reversible tetrahedron, forms the basis of an algorithm for growth. A close analysis of this volume and its kinematics led to a new discovery: by linking up several tetrahedra of this kind, the kinematic reversibility can be terminated and the movement frozen.
