Above Below Beneath Above, 2014 – Olafur Eliasson

Fifty-six steel columns twist up from the pavement to the ceiling of the entrance area of Toyo Ito's Market Street Tower in Singapore. The columns, all approximately fifteen metres in height, vary widely in form and orientation and form a portico of undulating roots leading into the skyscraper. Sixteen crystals hung among the roots combine two related polyhedra into a single design: the faces of the purple glass core are based on pentagons, while the steel outer frame consists of triangles and squares. The artwork responds to the ecological concept of the building: the columns act as aerating roots that anchor the architecture to the city and form a continuous passage from street to foyer. Unlike a regular urban grid, the portico reads as an irregular boundary between building and street.

Research:
Each of the sixteen crystals combines two related polyhedra: a purple glass core with pentagonal faces and a steel outer frame of triangles and squares. The dual relationship between the two polyhedra was used to derive the frame from the core (or the reverse). The analysis covered proportions, joint geometry for the steel frame, and suspension and load transfer for the crystals among the columns.