Model for your circular city, 2024 – Olafur Eliasson

Your circular city gathers a selection of study models around a large circular table, arranged into conceptually related districts that together suggest an ideal city that the viewer can wander in the imagination. The models are maquettes, prototypes, and geometric experiments that have been built at Studio Olafur Eliasson, mostly as preparatory studies for artworks and architectural projects, and which, taken together, form a topographic record of the studio's practice over the years. The work follows Model room (2003), which continued to evolve until it was acquired by Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2015. Much of the collection consists of Phillip C. Reiner's research study models, created in his years at the studio, along with other models. These studies run through SuperCube systems, spherical structures, aperiodic arrangements and branching geometries, with icosahedral symmetries, golden ratio relationships and interlocking modular systems recurring throughout them.

Research:
None of the models were made for this presentation; rather, each is a specific investigation into a spatial, mathematical or fabrication question and many of them correspond to documented research studies. The methods behind the models include computational geometry, parametric modelling, 3D printed rapid prototyping and robotic fabrication trials, tracing how a geometric principle carries from a small prototype towards architectural scale. It was shown at the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art in 2024 in the solo exhibition Your unexpected encounter.