world expo data sculptures
most data visualisation lives on screens. charts, dashboards, interactive plots. all useful, but all flat. this project asked a different question: what if you could hold data in your hands?
we turned environmental and social datasets into physical 3D-printed wood sculptures. each sculpture encoded real numbers into form, texture, and volume. the data wasn't illustrated. it was materialised.
the process
it started with data collection. environmental metrics, social indicators, things that matter but are hard to feel. numbers on a spreadsheet don't move people. objects in a room do.
the data fed into parametric models built in grasshopper and rhino. grasshopper is a visual programming environment for generative design, and it let us create rules that translated data values into geometric properties. height, curvature, density, surface pattern. every visible feature of the sculpture corresponded to something real in the dataset.
from there, the models went to fabrication. 3D printing in wood composite gave the pieces a warmth that plastic never has. there's something about holding a wooden object that triggers a different kind of attention than looking at a screen.
exhibition context
the sculptures were exhibited in the context of the world expo. placing them in that setting meant they had to communicate to a broad audience, not just designers or data scientists. people would walk up, pick them up, turn them over. the physicality of the medium invited a kind of engagement that a dashboard never could.
visitors didn't need to understand parametric modelling to get the point. they could feel the difference between a sculpture representing a thriving ecosystem and one representing a depleted one. the data was legible through touch and form.
the philosophy
i think there's something important about making invisible things tangible. we're surrounded by data that shapes our lives, but most of it stays abstract. air quality, inequality, resource consumption. these are real forces, but they don't have physical presence.
this project was an attempt to give them one. not as a replacement for traditional visualisation, but as a complement. a way to make people stop, hold something, and think about what it represents.