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The Making of Doris Sung’s Heat-Responsive Chandelier

Thermobimetal allows a structure to react to its surroundings.

Gearing up for our month-long Future Forward event series presented by the all-new Prius, The Creators Project team goes behind the scenes with the commissioned artists as they craft their interactive installations.

Sometimes the most innovative ideas come from what’s right in front of us. Early in her architectural career, as Doris Sung considered new ways to design structures, she turned to biology and the human body for inspiration. Through new technological advancements, Sung works with thermobimetals and other shape-memory alloys to make structures more efficient in their workings. In this video, we go behind the scenes as Sung develops a heat-responsive chandelier for the Future Forward event series, with The Creators Project and the all-new-Prius.

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Working in her Rolling Hills, CA studio, Sung demonstrates how thermobimetal allows her to make a structure that adapts when temperature changes, with the interconnecting pieces flattening in the cold, and curling as the environment heats up. The result is a structure that does not resist or combat the elements, but responds and adapts to its surroundings, functioning less like a shell than a skin. Here, Sung shows how some of the most creative solutions can grow from focusing not on what’s unusual or unexpected, but what’s so natural it’s hard to believe no one’s thought of it before.

The Future Forward event series presented by the all-new Prius will take place in three cities: in New York on June 4th, in Chicago on June 18th, and in LA on June 25. We will be posting full-length behind-the-scenes video profiles leading up to the kickoff event in New York City. RSVP for the Future Forward event series here

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