Wieringa's Wall

This wall of 9,595 tiles creates an architectural element that aids in both the aesthetics and acoustics of Room 230 at the Fields Institute in Toronto, Canada. It is a parameterized model of a corrugated surface proposed by R.M.A. Wieringa and described by N.G. de Bruijn in 1981. The computational model was constructed using the 'Cut and Project Method', which uses a 5D lattice to produce the vertices of a 2D Penrose Tiling, and then subsequently indexes each vertex via their relationship to levels of the derived cutting window, a rhombic icosahedron. The vertices then emerge into the third dimension in an orderly fashion. The wall acts as an acoustic scattering surface, lowering the reverberation time of the room.

Wieringa's Wall was undertaken by Ross J. Cocks as part of his Undergraduate Architecture Thesis at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, at the University of Toronto. The artist would like to note that the project was under the prudent mentorship of Nicholas Hoban, who also generously provided the requisite digital fabrication machinery to accomplish the project. A total of 3276. 83 Hrs were required by the artist to complete Wieringa's Wall, as well as a crew of 19 hired architecture students to install the piece. The artist would like to sincerely thank the Fields Institute, for allowing this piece to be housed at the Institute, and recognizes the tremendous honor that this is.