Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys was a renowned Dutch architect whose New Babylon work centred around an anti-capitalist urban environment. This was achieved through a network of flexible structures that could be considered social buildings as they asked for its users to consider its full creative potential.

When I started to research Constant I was initially inspired by the wire labyrinths Constant made in a web like form through the use of wire. I was visiting my grandpa in his retirement home and noticed the wheels on his chair where a similar shape; here I began to consider how I could communicate a similar use of webbing. One I started my prototypes I was used wire, wood and thread to web together different shapes wrapped around each other in a seemingly meaningless manner. After this part in the process I realised Constant’s work was less random and had a sense of uniform within his chaotic models. I then bent my wire to have a needle head like loop at the top and treaded the loops together to create the outline of a building. I developed this further once I started making a larger model of the layout of the UTS Insearch building, however I had issues with the glue not drying after 3 days and the wire staying straight causing the thread to look messy. I then thought a Styrofoam base could be more flexible for me to work with and poked wire into a base, this time instead of needle heads I connected the wire by looping thread multiple times around to form the buildings shape. Overall I believe I was able to refer to Constant’s New Babylon work greatly through the use of a labyrinth of forms made by wire to cause a network of structures.

Constant. 1958, Constant’s New Babylon: Hangende sector II, Witte de With, center                   for contemporary art, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Wigley, M. 1998, Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire, 1st 

                 edn, 010 Uitgeverij, New York.