Well its 2012 now. I managed to go through the whole month of December without updating this site, an unfortunate lapse on my part. However, this update is not the result of some new year’s resolution. I found out yesterday that, in the bustle of the holidays, I missed the news that Anne Tyng had died on the 27th of December. Tyng taught at Penn Design for 30 years and is probably best know for her work with my favorite modernist, Louis Kahn. She retired long before I attended the school, but I do indeed have one connection with her work. As part of my first history and theory course at Penn, I, along with another student, built a interpretive model of a house she designed.

Tyng was fascinated with geometry, and its capacity to define occupiable space. The house we were tasked with interpreting was based upon a triangular tessellation which can be seen both in plan and in elevation. We decided to build a model which demonstrated the projection of this tessellation by transforming from the flat pattern, into a 3D model of the form of the house. The result was very successful and I was quite pleased with it. I don’t have many models that I have built uploaded here yet, and it can be hard to find the appropriate context with which to share a model built for a History and Theory class. So, I can think of no better reason to share it than in memory of the person I learned so much about in order to understand and interpret her work.