left: Ojai Festival Performance shell design by hMa; right: A curved wall of hMa's Infinity Chapel,  in construction

Continuing hanrahan Meyers architects' (hMa's) discussion around ideas about Infinity and spatial design, we are showing below excerpts from Einstein’s essay, ‘Geometry and Experience’. (from a lecture before the Prussian Academy of Sciences, January 27, 1921)

‘Can we visualize a three-dimensional universe which is finite, yet unbounded?  
The usual answer to this question is ‘No’, but that is not the right answer.’

We find this statement provocative and inspiring. What a sense of profound revelation, freedom, and expansion to hear that the bounded universe that we live in is, by being unbounded, infinite.  Back to Einstein:

‘The purpose of the following remarks is to show that the answer should be ‘Yes’. I want to show that without any extraordinary difficulty we can illustrate the theory of a finite universe by means of a mental picture to which, with some practice, we shall soon grow accustomed.’

hMa has pursued infinity within their architecture, through architectural designs that incorporate specific mathematical paradigms.  Being within spaces with these specific constructions, the mind can freely wander, within the paradigm of an infinite, unbounded construction.  Examples within hMa’s work that display these concepts:

Ojai Festival Shell (a shell based on studies of infinite structures, including turtle shells);  Infinity Chapel, based on a hyper-cube with shifting shapes related to occupancy and sound waves;  and Battery Park City Community Center Sound Wall:  a building with an edge as thin as glass, embedded with bird songs.

hMa's Battery Park City Community Center, featuring a curved glass 'Sound Wall'