Brandeis University Faculty Center

This was a collaboration with artist, Rebecca Thompson, and Master Stone Mason and Carver, JB Barnhouse, for a new public plaza for the University of Iowa, College of Pharmacy.  Our proposal combines elements of the natural world –terra– with elements from the research world’s spirit of invention and discovery –inventum.

The local limestone walls, dense groves of trees, medicinal herb beds, and stones from an adjacent ravine frame a space full of hidden discoveries: rune-like table etchings, secret dioramas embedded in stone walls, and a DNA light display that responds to passersby. Taking the form of two chromosome strands carving through the site, Terra Inventum creates a direct physical and visual connection between the College and the Quad Ravine; science meets nature.

Some words take shape directly from the expressiveness of the sounds they name –WHAM! POW! SPLAT! Poets often use these onomatopoeic words to engage us with the images they hope to create in our mind’s eye. This idea –that the construction of a word could be intimately tied to the image it evokes– made us wonder if there might be a corollary in architecture. In other words, a kind of space directly formed by the artistic impulses it houses –a space in which art, artist, community, and environment are as expressive as the words BAM! BANG! BOOM! –an Onomatopoeic Space.