This past November, nestled under London’s A13 highway, was an mysterious glowing orb that invited visitors to crawl inside and take a look. It was called Osmo and was designed by the London studio Loop.pH as part of the city’s annual Light Night Canning Town. The project featured a pneumatically-inflated cocoon fashioned from silver mylar, and its viewers could pass through the zip-up entrance and sit beneath the stars in a brilliant, all-encompassing setting.
Loop.pH projected the galaxy onto a 29-foot-high surface with lasers and based it on the actual night sky. They used this map from In the Sky, which charts 88 constellations onto a 2D rectangular map. So, the designers had the challenge of projecting something flat onto a (roughly) spherical object. The 3D modeling program Rhino and a graphical algorithm editor called Grasshopper helped them with this.
The installation wasn’t an exact science but was a stunning experience nonetheless. When inside Osmo, visitors could look in any direction and were free from horizon lines, bad weather, and other factors – it provided them a more intimate look at the multitude of stars.
Loop.pH website
via [Gizmodo]