Past Event

Diluvio is a sculptural installation inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s deluge drawings and his studies of the dynamics of the flow of water, air, light, shadows, and energy. It is featured on the main entry floor of the MacOdrum Library.

A public Diluvio Presentation and Reception will be held on March 22, 2019 – don’t miss it!

About the Project

“Diluvio” is part of Carleton University’s Cinquecento: Carleton Celebrates Leonardo da Vinci, a year-long celebration honouring the renaissance genius on the 500th anniversary of his death in France on May 2, 1519. The installation is inspired by Leonardo’s reflections on the inter-connections within all of Nature as revealed by his studies of the flow of water, air, light, shadows, energy, and his evocative “deluge drawings.”

Deluge drawing by Leonardo da Vinci

The installation is the recent work by students in the Crossings Interdisciplinary Workshop, offered by Prof. Manuel Báez in the Fall term of 2018 at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism. By working with aluminum mesh that’s been folded into a very fluidly malleable pattern, students were encouraged to experientially explore and improvise through these dynamic shape-shifting properties and their projected shadows while drawing inspiration from Leonardo’s speculations and studies.

Crossings Interdisciplinary Workshop Diluvio student teams:

• Hamid Aghashahi & Guillermo Bourget Morales
• Abigail Maguire & Edyta Suska
• Connor Tamborro & Jasmine Sykes
• Nikolina Braovac & Asmi Sharma
• Petros Kapetanakis & Hadi Siddiqui
• Daniel Baldassarri & Liam Yeaman
• Shaylyn Kelly & Walter Fu
• Kaleigh Jeffrey & Stephen Scanlan
• Sepideh Rajabzadeh & Runjia Li
• Dylan Rutledge & Tianlang Feng
• Special thanks to Sami Karimi for his contribution to the Diluvio installation

“Leonardo saw nature as weaving an infinite variety of elusive patterns on the basic warp and woof of mathematical perfection. Nowhere could nature’s endless variations on geometrical themes be seen more marvellously than in the dynamics of water, above all in the configurations of vortices.”

– Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man, 2006

Biography

Prof. Manuel Baez

Associate Professor Manuel A. Báez has been at the Carleton University Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism since January of 2001. Previously, he taught in the United States at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City and Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. His work as an architect, artist and researcher draws inspiration from the generative potential of the forms, structures and integrative systems generated by elemental processes that exist throughout the natural environment. He has extensively exhibited and lectured in various international conferences and institutions. The Leonardo da Vinci eminent scholar Martin Kemp has featured Báez’s research in his 2016 book Structural Intuitions: Seeing Shapes in Art and Science. He won the 2017 Dream competition held by Heritage Canada with his design of The Gather-Ring, an offering of a contemplative and reflective pavilion on the Portage Bridge as part of Canada 150. In 2014, The Light Keeper permanent ceiling installation at Carleton’s Ojigkwanong Centre was designed and built by Báez along with architecture students and in consultation with the centre’s architect, Douglas Cardinal. In 2012, he was the inaugural speaker for CreativeMornings Ottawa and a guest speaker at TEDxCarletonU in 2010. His work was also honoured with a 2005 Research Achievement Award from Carleton University. The research has been supported by such agencies and institutions as the Canada Council for the Arts, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Science and Technology Museum, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Cranbrook Academy of Art and Carleton University. Báez received his B. Arch. Degree from The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union and his M. Arch. Degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He is a licensed architect in New York State.

Links to The Gather-Ring:
https://newsroom.carleton.ca/story/gather-ring/
http://gather-ring.ca 

Links to The Light Keeper:
https://newsroom.carleton.ca/story/symbols-of-reconciliation/

MacOdrum Library