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FR-EE / Fernando Romero reveals El Sol in collaboration with Swarovski for Design Miami
United States Architecture News - Dec 02, 2015 - 16:05 6866 views
all images courtesy of FR-EE / Fernando Romero
FR-EE / Fernando Romero reveals its emblematic project with the renowned Austrian crystal company Swarovski as part of its 120º anniversary, which is shown year by year at the fair Design Miami. Fernando Romero studied the significant value that astronomy and celestial objects had on the pre-hiispanic cultures, as well as their relationship to nature. From that point on, Fernando conceived El Sol. It is a geodesic sphere that represents his own understanding of the sun and, at the same time, it pays tribute to Buckminster Fuller.
The design celebrates Fuller’s engineering creativity and takes advantage of the best contemporary technologies. In its headquarters in Wattens, Austria, Swarovski designed specifically for this project the 2,880 crystals that make up El Sol. As the sun, this perfect sphere emits light from its interior.
But in this case, the light breaks through the Swarovski crystals, and in doing so a unique visual effect is created. Fernando and the experts group worked 350 hours in El Sol, which weighs more than 500 kilograms. The visitor will be able to interact with El Sol through a lens developed by Swarovski, which can be mounted on the cellphone and, when taking a picture, will refract the light, generating a kaleidoscopic effect.
El Sol is inspired by the sacred geometry used by the ancient Aztecs and Mayans in constructing their pyramids, which were designed as a means to monitor celestial events. FR-EE’s Founder and Creative Director Fernando Romero endeavored to pay homage to this legacy while also employing modern technologies in creating the structure, which required over 350 hours of engineering work and three months of design and technical development and which was made at Swarovski’s headquarters in Wattens, Austria.
El Sol features a spherical cut-out internal structure, and a smooth outer surface made up of an intricate puzzle of four different types of specially developed precision-cut crystals covered in Swarovski’s iconic Aurora Borealis coating. Faceted internally, the crystals augment the light emitted from the installation’s core; a spherical pool of LEDs whose light is refracted by the facets of the crystals, evoking the sun’s gaseous, moving terrain.
“It is an honor to collaborate with Swarovski on El Sol. The project has allowed me to explore mathematics in relation to nature and my Mexican ancestry, which is very important and personal to my practice'' said Fernando Romero.
Project Facts
Project name: El Sol
Client: Swarovski
Team and collaborations: Fernando Romero, Sergio Rebelo, Ruoting Wang, Unai Artetxe, Daniela Gallo, Celia Julve, Lucas Velle
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