Nir Sivan chose not to draw Selva, but to sculpt it by hand. The suites of the resort began as small bodies of terracotta clay, pinched and pressed between the fingers directly over the site drawing, so that each volume found its place in the clearing before it had a plan. Touch led the process: the composition arose from the dialogue between the hand, the material and the slope of the site.
Small 3D prints then tested the massing. The printed suite, with its amber interior and its layered white shell, sits among the clay bodies as a member of the same family: a check of proportion and geometry that loops back into the clay and into the digital model. The cracks and finger marks of the clay and the layer lines of the print are left as they are; they are the record of how the form was found.
Two short films open the gallery. In the first, the suites take shape in terracotta clay. The second is work in progress in virtual reality: wearing an Oculus headset, Nir Sivan sculpts the same volumes at full scale in Gravity Sketch, with the photographs of the forest and the model of the terrain hanging around him in the virtual studio. It is the way a car body is modelled before it is engineered: the hand finds the form in space, and only then do surfaces, structure and fabrication follow. Clay and VR check each other, and the 3D prints close the loop.
This artisanal yet technological method integrates mathematics, structure and feasibility from the start. It is the method of the whole studio: sculpt first by hand, then reverse-engineer.
The project: Selva, Costa Rica.
- Year
- 2025
- Status
- Study models
- Role
- Design, sculpted by hand
- Construction
- Terracotta clay, hand-modelled; PLA 3D prints
