Abstract
With the growing genre of architecture generated by biomorphic design and biomimetic processes, a reevaluation of
Frederick J. Kiesler’s work is ever more timely. During the mid-20th century he became increasingly occupied with
the relationship of structure and natural form in architecture. The Cave of the New Being (also known as the Grotto
for Meditation), proposed in the 1960s for New Harmony represented the designer’s pièce de résistance, embodying
all of the intellectual currents of his era, from surrealism to biotechnics, yet it was never realized.
Through the College of Architecture, a Design Studio and Digital Fabrication Seminar all embarked on formal
research and tectonic fulfillment of the project, utilizing digital modeling and fabrication technologies. The participants
complemented research with the help of archival resources and discussions with the original client, who remained
dedicated to the proposal until her recent passing. It was deemed “unbuildable” in its day by a rival architect. More
than providing closure on an unfinished project, the New Harmony Grotto will function as a permanent landmark on
the university campus, as part of a meditation pond and garden next to the College of Architecture building.
The team’s investigations endeavored to synthesize Kiesler’s seemingly impenetrable notions of “continuous
structure” and “endless space,” along with his initial handling of biomorphism and recursive geometry in design. With
the aid of three-dimensional scanning, reverse engineering and digital fabrication, the team spawned a structural/
spatial apparatus that pays tribute to Kiesler’s intended maritime-inspired forms and tiled patterning imposed onto a
minimal structure.
The project is re-imagined for a hot-humid climate using a framework of stainless steel components that are
digitally fabricated and assembled into the shell on a recycled concrete slab. This trellis creates a space for rest
and contemplation on the campus. Seating and water features will connect the visitors with the shell and the pond
nearby. Over time vegetation planted in the cells on the ground will complete the space.
Continuous Structure
A reinterpretation of Frederick Kiesler’s Grotto for Meditation
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In 1960 Frederick Kiesler was commissioned by a patron of avant-garde modernism to build a “Grotto for Meditation” in rural, mid-western
United States. This late work in his career was the culmination of this themes of continuous structure and endless space while taking a definitive
turn toward biomorphic form. The project was never realized due to his death in 1963 after a struggle with the client and himself over how to
relinquish the essence of the project sculpted with his own hands and delegate the task of drawing and building it to others.
In 2008 we met his original client for the Grotto and were given access to the archives of this project and Kiesler’s related work. What started
as a historic documentation of the project soon turned toward a speculation into the nature of Kiesler’s deeper meaning of his speculations on
structure and space. Through conversations with the client, we were privileged to re-engage the dialogue she had been having with Kiesler fifty
years later. If effect, we were given the project in mid-stream and asked to finish it for the client before she passed away earlier this year. This
auspicious opportunity was met with a group of students under our direction and a visiting critic from the town of New Harmony, Indiana were
the project was initially to be sited. Along with this lineage we were naturally intrigued with the discussion of what Kiesler’s ideas mean today given
new digital tools to design in topological space--endless space perhaps. It is possible to generate complex patterns that have inherent structural
continuity and ultimately extract the actual components of construction from the digital model with very little information lost in the translation.
Kiesler wrote about continuous structure as being composed of “die-cast” units that were neither column, wall, floor or roof but a hybridized
system of continuously transforming components that created his womblike shells spaces. No part was in pure tension or compression but in
a state of perpetual dynamic equilibrium. His notion that these integers of construction would be “easily erected” and “minimal in weight” is
prophetic to the logics of differentiated modularity, repetitive assembly and finite element optimization that are essential to contemporary digital
material practice. i
In 2010 we built our re-interpretation of the project at full scale project out 250 unique digitally fabricated stainless steel parts. Kiesler’s original
model, cast out of bronze, had deep material significance for us. It evoked a permanence that only metal can achieve. Its surface complexity
was reproducible through 3D printing and multi-axis milling but beyond the scale of the model that we made from a 3D scan of the original, that
technology as useless and less interesting to us as we sought to scale up. Kiesler had a prototype built by a local contractor out of thin shell
concrete but it was an evident failure and work ceased using that methodology without another solution at hand. But other drawings by Kiesler of
early ideas were evocative of structural typologies and material organization that differed from the monolithic shell construction of is final Grotto
proposal. He sketched tessellations, grid shells, and cellular arrangements of components that seemed to have perforated seams and alpha-numeric
designations. We chose another metal as the material to align with Kiesler’s original for the Grotto but diverted toward his more tectonic rather
than stereotomic resolution for what “continuous structure” could mean.
Another critical piece of archival material that we were given by the client was a section of the ceramic tile that Kiesler had designed a pattern for
and had made in Japan and shipped to Indiana to surface the concrete surface of the Grotto. The pattern is composed of the repetition of the 3
different sized figures that rotate freely to connect in the most efficient and continuous arrangement. The edges of the sheet followed a spline that
would mate with the adjoining sheet and continue the pattern without indication of their modular grid. The semi-round tiles allowed the sheet to
assume a double curved fit to the undulations of the subsurface that would have been present on Kiesler’s Grotto as he conceived it in clay before
casting in bronze. We were less interested in the materiality of the ceramic but very intrigued by the lesson in recursive geometry that the tiles
suggested as a pure pattern that could be used in other ways to build a surface with compound curvature.
2
A vector analysis of the Kiesler’s tiles revealed that there was a rational geometric logic that followed the simple rules that generate a Voronoi
pattern. Occurring in nature from dragonfly wings to cracked mud the pattern has become emblematic of a certain period in recent design using
parametric software, it became salient here as it related to the Kiesler’s logic of tiling a surface and his general interest in non-orthogonal tectonic
systems and biomorphic form. He understood this when writing about the “turgor” produced in the “the resistance-rigidity of plant-structures”
in 1937 about an earlier project. ii We sought to control the pattern and how it would be deployed in the project based on force analysis and
programmatic responses inside and outside the shell of our reinterpretation of the Grotto. We used parametric software to study random and
more regular arrangements of cells generated from a Voronoi pattern in planar space and mapped the pattern onto the particular topology of the
shell we designed for a specific site. The vector diagram was expanded into a spatial matrix of components on a parametrically designed shell.
A tectonic system of cellular units were analyzed using a variety of parameters and constraints that dealt with structural robustness, degrees of
density, proportion of cells relative to gravity and material and CNC sheet formatting.
The eventual cellular arrangement we developed was a hybrid of random and ordered modules that became elongated in the vertical regions
of the shell in response to the dominate force of gravity and more dense in the top to perform as a waffle grid, transferring load in multiple
directions. The cells lineated as they met the ground to connect to the foundation and to be surfaced for seating. The particular arrangement
we determined was tested with FEA software to find the areas where stress was reaching a point of deflection and the cells were corrected in
those areas to transfer the load more effectively. The FEA feedback then informed the selection of stainless steel plate that was specified for
the component fabrication. A gradient of thickness in the ribs and connectors from 1/8” to 3/16” to 1/4” was used to remove material where
possible and provide more resistance to buckling and deformation were necessary. This process of optimization reduced the weight of the
material by 25% which directly reciprocated with a lower material cost with no compromise of overall structural potential.
The “New Harmony Grotto” as the re-interpretation project has been coined is substantially complete and awaits the next phase to integrate
seating and landscaping into its cellular framework. The seating will be a combination of monolithic and thin shell concrete cellular infill in the
region that curls under and envelops the occupant. The flatten zone outside the interior space will be filled with growing medium and planted
with vegetation that will grow into the wall and roof cells taking on their shape and providing shade to the interior. The Grotto is sited in a
wetland landscape on a concrete foundation that is perforated to allow the water to reach the planting.
We set out to study and then diverge from Kiesler’s “Cave” as it was also called by the client, to be distinct and for reasons of feasibility wanting
to avoid the failure of assuming there’s one way to build a shell. By shifting from a monolithic surface to a cellular system of finite components
we were able to channel some of his peripheral interests in irregular tectonic systems that were evident in his thoughts and sketches. We like to
think that Kiesler would have embraced digital technology and its potentials to bend space and warp structure as contemporary architects have
done so in their desire to challenge the dogmas of Modernism-just as Kiesler was doing 50 years ago.
i [Frederick J.Kiesler: Selected Writings, ‘Notes on Architecture: the Space House’ 1934, ed. S. Gohr & G. Luyken, Hatje, 1996.]
ii [Frederick J.Kiesler: Selected Writings, ‘Design – Correlation: Marcel Duchamp’s “Big-Glass”, 1937’, ed. S. Gohr & G. Luyken, Hatje, 1996. pg. 41]
Images that are the property of the Kiesler and Blaffer Foundation are indicated and are used by permission for internal educational purposes. All other images created by authors and their agents
3
Frederick Kiesler’s original bronze model of the project from
Blaffer Foundation archives in New Harmony. Built in 1963
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Frederick Kiesler’s site plan for the project from the Kiesler
Foundation Collection in Vienna, drawn in 1963
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Model of New Harmony, Roofless Church (Philip Johnson)
and Grotto for Meditation (Frederick Kiesler)
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Milled and 3D printed model of Grotto for Meditation
reverse engineered from scan of bronze model and original
site plan integrated into survey of New Harmony
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Above: Study for Endless House, around 1950. Frederick Kiesler Foundation
Below: Sketch study for Endless House. Paris Endless, 1947. Frederick Kiesler Foundation
Above: The Triumph of St. Joan, Kiesler Paper, April 23, 25, and 27, 1952. Frederick Kiesler Foundation
Below: Endless House, Conceptual drawing, 1948. First release to Zodiac for publication.
Original tile for Grotto designed by Kiesler, made and purchased in New Harmony, 1963. Property of Blaffer Foundation
Vector drawing of Kiesler’s tile deriving Voronoi pattern
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Fredrick Kiesler’s original sketch
Student Sketches
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Surface digital model
Surface digital model based on 3D scan of original Bronze model
Clay positive for Kiesler’s Bronze model
Cellular model
Kiesler’s Prototype, Kiesler pictured with
contractor in New Harmony, circa 1963
Studio prototyping process
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Iterative generations of cellular structural system using parametric
Voronoi processing and topological mapping
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Final version of cellular shell that combined random, ordered and linear
cellular arrangements based on structure, program and site constraints
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of shell indicating areas of stress that were
corrected in final version for construction
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Final quarter scale prototype, May 2010
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Model of Architecture Building (Philip Johnson)
and New Harmony Grotto
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New Harmony Garden with Grotto,
Kiesler’s original Gate and Bridge
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Full-scale Grotto under construction, February 2010
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New Harmony Grotto installed on it permanent site May 2010
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New Harmony Grotto substantially complete, next
phase pending for insertion of seating and ballast
concrete at interior and vegetation in linear cells at
exterior May 2010
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