Art Omi Deconstructive Utopia Design Gallery and Installation

The project began with a simple balloon-and-yarn experiment exploring expansion, tension, and deflation. As the balloon changed shape, the yarn created unexpected curves and connections to the ground.

That physical behavior became the starting point for the architecture, allowing deformation, void, and movement to guide the spatial organization.

The main focus was translating a temporary physical experiment into an architectural experience without losing its original energy.

The goal was not simply to create an unusual form, but to connect form-finding with circulation, structure, material, landscape, and the way visitors experience the building.

The project continues to be an important reference for my future work. Its approach to physical experimentation and material-driven form-finding is something I would like to develop further through installations, smaller built studies, and future architectural projects.

The key moment came when I stopped looking at the balloon studies as objects and started looking at what their deformation was doing to the space around them.As the balloon deflated, the surface became unstable and unpredictable, but the void it produced felt much more spatially powerful. I realized that instead of designing a solid object and asking people to move around it, I could invert that relationship and make the absence itself the center of the project.That became the organizing idea for the gallery. The spherical void works as an entrance, but also as a moment of compression, curiosity, and transition. You don’t fully understand the space from outside—you have to move through this carved opening and discover the gallery beyond it.That shift from thinking about “form” to thinking about “void” was really the conceptual turning point of the project.

The key was to avoid over-rationalizing the form once it moved into the digital and fabrication process. What interested me in the balloon-and-yarn studies was that the geometry came from tension, pressure, and deformation rather than from a predetermined shape. So instead of cleaning those irregularities up, I tried to preserve the asymmetry, changing curvature, and traces of movement in the digital model.The CNC-milled formwork then became a way to freeze that temporary moment into something permanent. I actually liked the contradiction between the light, unstable balloon experiment and the heaviness of poured concrete. The final shell does not move, but its geometry still carries the tension and instability of the process that created it, which is how I tried to preserve that kinetic quality.

The contrast between the grounded concrete shell and the suspended studios was very intentional. The concrete shell acts as the permanent, anchored element, while the studios use lightweight steel frames with wood cladding so they feel visually lighter and almost as if they are floating above the landscape. Structurally, the systems respond to different needs, but perceptually I wanted them to create a clear dialogue between mass and lightness.As visitors move through the site, that contrast becomes physical. Around the concrete shell, you feel thickness, enclosure, and weight. As you approach or move beneath the studios, the experience becomes more open, and the landscape continues visually underneath them. So the structural difference also creates two very different bodily experiences—one grounded and compressed, and the other elevated and weightless.