{"id":41138,"date":"2024-09-23T11:11:15","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T15:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/?p=41138"},"modified":"2024-09-23T11:11:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T15:11:16","slug":"jenny-sabin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/jenny-sabin\/","title":{"rendered":"From Nature\u2019s Structures, Prof Weaves Architectural Creations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Through a research lab and a studio, Jenny Sabin bridges the gap between science and design<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Joe Wilensky<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her fabric-and-fiber sculptures, light-filled and technology-infused, span atriums, courtyards\u2014and the interdisciplinary spaces between art, architecture, and science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Architecture professor Jenny Sabin<\/a> creates dramatic, immersive installations that merge design with fields ranging from biology to engineering, botany to data science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ryan Young \/ Cornell University<\/figcaption>
Sabin in her Rand Hall lab, with digitally fabricated ceramic \u201cPolyBrick\u201d structures.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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One sweeping, color-changing installation drew its inspiration\u2014after years of research\u2014from the miniscule and delicate structure of butterfly wings; another incorporated artificial intelligence, collecting data and impressions of its human visitors and responding in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since arriving at Cornell in 2011\u2014and establishing both a research and design lab<\/a> on campus and her own client-based design studio<\/a> in downtown Ithaca\u2014Sabin has developed a symbiotic, multidisciplinary presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two elements of her work inform and inspire each other: the biological systems she studies on the Hill, often at the nano scale, may be later realized in much larger architectural forms\u2014whether knit in fiber, created with 3D printers, or laced with glowing lights\u2014in dramatic installations around the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source of inspiration: The blue morpho butterfly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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\u201cOftentimes, we think of the architect as drawing the sketch on a napkin, the \u2018big idea\u2019\u2014a diagram that you then design toward in a deterministic way,\u201d says Sabin, who is chairing Cornell\u2019s new Department of Design Tech<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a very top-down approach; I\u2019m interested in turning it upside down. I frequently don\u2019t know what the final form will look like. It evolves over time, as a collaborative process\u2014and that\u2019s how nature operates.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sabin was recruited to Cornell\u2014from Penn, where she earned a master\u2019s in architecture, taught for six years, and launched her studio and research program\u2014with the express purpose of bringing emerging technologies into the architecture curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of her lab\u2019s first NSF-funded projects looked at structural color\u2014hues created not by pigments or dyes, but by the geometry of the molecules themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something that you see in nature everywhere: the wings of the blue morpho butterfly, hummingbird wings, abalone seashells,\u201d Sabin says. \u201cWe looked at those patterns and textures at a nano scale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I frequently don\u2019t know what the final form will look like. It evolves over time, as a collaborative process\u2014and that\u2019s how nature operates.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From that research, Sabin developed high-tech, responsive color-changing fibers with photoluminescent, crystalline structures; they were built on the molecular concepts found in nature, but realized at an architectural scale through a variety of new materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The applied design result of that research was Lumen<\/em><\/a>, a knitted-fiber installation that spanned two courtyards outside MoMa PS1\u2014the Museum of Modern Art\u2019s Long Island City location in Queens\u2014in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With muted hues during the day and an ethereal glow at night, Lumen<\/em>\u2019s vast canopy structure was created out of a million yards of recycled textiles mixed with photoluminescent fibers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jesse Winter<\/figcaption>
Lumen<\/em>, seen from above.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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(The work\u2014which was featured in a New York Time<\/em>s video<\/a>\u2014also offered shade and seating for visitors, even spraying a cooling mist in warmer weather.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Sabin\u2019s largest installation to date, it was immensely popular (and eminently photographable); it also won that year\u2019s MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program<\/a> competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019, as an artist-in-residence at Microsoft Research\u2019s headquarters in Redmond, WA, Sabin created Ada<\/em><\/a>, an artificially intelligent pavilion outfitted with cameras and microphones to interpret visitors\u2019 facial expressions and ambient sounds in order to interact with them through light and color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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