Nested Platonic Solid

For our second project in Space/ Materiality, we were to design and construct the five platonic solids in different materials, to demonstrate the different meaning.

for me, I took the idea of every solid representing an organ in the human body, and thus together forming a whole. That is why I tried to put them in an order resembling the human body. Since most of the organs are aligned in their place in the human body, I decided to take into account the esthetics as well. I wanted to try and go from the heaviest color to the lightest. From black (blood) to transparent (air).

I started with the dodecahedron, which represents the heart. The size of the first platonic solid war roughy the size of a heart, made from black plexiglass.

The second solid surround the dodecahedron, was the hexahedron, otherwise known as the “cube” or “earth”. This sold represents the liver. For this solid, I took a sheet metal and cut six pieces to make a cube, I then curled the edges.

The third platonic solid which I chose to do was the star tetrahedron, which represents the pancreas and spleen in the human body. For the tetrahedron, I decided to use brass pipes cut in the same size.

The fourth solid was the icosahedron, or the kidneys. For this one I decided to also use its meaning as water. The material I used was an iridescent plexiglass. This material was able to not only reflect on the former solids inside, but was able to duplicate them and also provide other colors on the objects. I also decided to incorporate a design resembling the chemical element of water from the Periodic table, (one that cam be mistaken for the famous design of Micky Mouse). All of the cuttings for this solid were made in the Laser cutter.

The last platonic solid was the octahedron, which represents the air and the lungs. For the last solid I used wood and very thin poleax glass, both were cut by hand. The design For this solid was based on the importance of trees in the making of breathable air. The wood was cut into 8 triangles forming the basic octahedron, and the plexiglass was cut into 24 smaller triangles that fit into the middle of the wood triangles. The thought behind this was how air forms from the wood.

The following is a nested drawing of all the platonic solids.

All of the drawings were edited in Photoshop to create a more completed look.