Dror for MuBE São Paulo

A geometric stairway stretches toward the sky
 

I had the pleasure of meeting Brazilian artist Alécia de Menezes Seidler, who founded the Love & Art Children’s Foundation in 2003. The organization focuses on underserved children in remote areas of Brazil, where it conducts art workshops as a means of empowerment and inspiration. I was fascinated by her work and the influential role art plays in developing imagination, self-esteem, selflessness, and hope. Alécia invited the studio to create an artwork for the kids’ school—an opportunity to give them an interactive object that doubled as a beacon of encouragement.

I wanted to create a sculpture that evoked the notion of thinking big and reaching for the stars: a physical embodiment of the foundation’s mission. If you look inside the opening of a QuaDror structure, its intersecting angles create tiny stairs-like shapes. These miniature steps gave rise to the configuration for our sculpture: a long, grand structure that utilizes QuaDror geometry to form a gigantic staircase that extends toward the sky.

Reach is comprised of 16 QuaDror structures, each measuring one meter by one meter. Each hollow, polished stainless steel piece is made using origami folding technology, a manufacturing process that allows for highly accurate, complex shapes. Fabricated by local steel company Mekal with support by Aperam and Boomspdesign, the five-meter-tall sculpture weighed in at 1.5-tons. After learning about our project, the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture in São Paulo, MuBE exhibited Reach before it was transported to the school.

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