Greg Lynn in front of his design for Swarovski Crystal Palace.
Immediately upon entering the Design Miami/ pavilion you notice one thing – Greg Lynn’s design for Swarovski Crystal palace. It consists of four huge, overlapping sails soaring overhead covered in over 2 million crystals. Whitewall spoke with Lynn, known for his use computer technology to create biomorphic designs and architecture about his passion for sailing and the complications of applying all those crystals.
WHITEWALL: How did Swarovski approach you about creating something for Crystal Palace?
GREG LYNN: Nadja [Swarovski] asked if I was interested in doing something with crystals. I saw Arik Levy’s installation in Milan, talk to Nadja’s team. They are very open at Crystal Palace and just asked if I’d like to do something with crystals in Miami and started sending me crystals. I went to their office in London and went through bins and bins of shapes and colors and started to have ideas about what to do. I had a kind of goal to do something of the scale of building materials rather than an object.
WW: Is the prompt to make a chandelier-like installation or just to use crystals?
GL: Just make something with crystals. I followed the Crystal Projects since maybe the first one, with Tord Boontje. I realized that these kinds of projects are good ways to think about new construction or new applications. I thought that since where I was coming from was architecture that it would be good to try and build a crystal room or a crystal volume. Plus, I’ve known about the sail making technology because I sail.
WW: Right, I saw that you and Frank Gehry sometimes get together and sail.
GL: Well I’m not in Frank’s yacht club but I sail with him every week, we race each other.
WW: Have you always sailed?
GL: Yeah, I took a little hiatus. I sailed like crazy as a kid, sailed through college, then stopped and raced a little bit on other peoples boats but it was when I saw this hi-tech sail material that I got really excited about boats again. I used to only sail on wooden boats and was a real big snob about plastic boats but now with carbon fiber and this kind of sail-making, all of a sudden sailboats were more exciting to me than aerospace. It’s a really hi-tech industry.
WW: Would the sails work on the boat?
GL: Yes, but it kind of defeats the purpose for sailing because what’s great about the material on a boat is that it is so light-weight and strong and crystal is really heavy. Each one of these things is 200 pounds.
WW: Was there a conflict at all with crystal being a precious material and then weaving it into a sail that is strong enough to withstand powerful winds?
GL: The bigger conflict was placing 2,000,000 crystals without having some poor person stick them all down. So what we found is a technique used for transferring crystals onto clothing where a computer places them on sheets and then we lay the sheets out and were able to play with the pattern of crystal colors.
WW: The sails are foldable and can fit into the trunk of your car. Why did you want to make them so easily transportable?
GL: For me, with sustainability and energy I try to think of it on my own terms and make it creative. One of the things I’ve been doing with a lot of stuff is to use less material, make things lightweight, and make it transportable. The HSBC lounge wall I designed can be taken apart in an afternoon and will fit in a 5 x 10 x 2 foot crate. There are no screws or nails. It’s a self-supporting structure with no mechanical construction. Instead of building in sustainable material it’s more about making things light-weight, compact, easy to transport.
