Spherophilia

Spherical Kitchen – Luigi Colani

The most perfect spheres ever created by humans sit snugly inside gyroscopes contained in the Gravity Probe B, orbiting 642Km above earth. The purpose of the GP-B mission is to experimentally investigate Albert Einstein’s 1916 general theory of relativity – examining his well-known theories of spacetime. The spheres, which deviate in perfection by, at most, 40 atoms are made of fused quartz. According to Wikipedia, if scaled to the size of the earth, the tallest mountains would be 2.4 meters high!

These ping-pong sized objects are just a little closer to the ‘Universal Music’ then we are ourselves. Musica universalis (The Music of the Spheres) popularised by Pythagoras, and later Johannes Kepler, is the ancient mystical/philosophical and mathematical concept that appreciates the movement of the planets in their periodicities as kind of music.

Dataisnature found a compilation of spherical links hiding on its hard drive from last year and now seems like the time to share:

Cabinet Magazine has an article, A Minor History of Giant Spheres, where among other things, you can learn about the 180-foot tall Perisphere, a giant ball housing a model of a Utopian garden city of the future called “Democracity.”

Luigi Colani is known for his futuristic organic design of houses, robots, and TV’s, among many other things – how could you not resist his chocolate orange spherical kitchen?

More spherical dwelling objects come in the form of Free Spirit Spheres – eco-friendly round houses that are hang from trees.

Heading back to space, well if it were 50yrs ago, we may well have flown past a giant Satelloon on our way. One of these exploded in 1959, ‘the result was a spectacular, 10-minute light show all along the east coast of the US as the thousands of fragments of the aluminium-covered balloon reflected the light of the setting sun.’

Finally here are a few generated spherical creations and destructions: AudioSphere, Wicker3, Tardigrade Synth, Figures.series_II_D, Spherical Harmonie.