Talk / Atrium · E14, 3rd floor
Lexicon
With Alfonso Parra Rubio@aparraru
AtriumE14, 3rd floor · MIT Media Lab
How key was building hardware-oriented software, web hosted, fast, solving complex math problems with a design focus, with real fabrication constraints, for a public installation at the Boston Public Library, resulting in a large hanging piece.
Lexicon is a large-scale structural shell assembled from origami-folded aluminum cells. Developed as the culmination of doctoral research at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, the project investigates how folding and assembly can realize lightweight, load-bearing freeform structures at the architectural scale.
Created specifically for the Boston Public Library's Deferrari Hall, Lexicon responds to the layered histories embodied within the building. Its geometry-driven shell pays tribute to both halves of the Library: to Rafael Guastavino, whose structural vaults demonstrated the expressive potential of unreinforced masonry shells, and to Philip Johnson, whose modular architectural vocabulary is reinterpreted through folded aluminum.
About the presenter
PhD @ MIT CBA. I design and fabricate fold-based systems that turn flat materials into high-performance structures, bridging geometry, manufacturing, and material behavior.
And I also blow glass.
Lexicon, 2026. Alfonso Parra Rubio · Erik Strand. Folded aluminum, 18 × 18 × 7 ft. Photography: Vikram Valluri.