![\"Illumination:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778326534_18_hqdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMay 8, 2026 by Caitlin Kelley<\/p>\n
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Illumination: The Strauch Hypercube<\/p>\n
Beauty is not foreign to mathematics. The natural order is far more interdisciplinary than academia\u2019s hyper-compartmentalized disciplines might suggest. Take the Strauch Hypercube<\/a>, hanging in the Grimes Engineering Center: elegant in its symmetry, this floating lightwork embodies what one might call \u201cmathematical beauty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Suspended above the building\u2019s atrium, the Strauch Hypercube roared to life<\/a> last fall at a Dean\u2019s Society event celebrating its installation. Alumni, faculty and distinguished guests gathered across three floors as the multicolored spectacle illuminated the interior space after dark. The building\u2019s open-concept design turned the display into a beacon visible to the surrounding campus.<\/p>\n By turns a starry sky and a blinking marquee, no two vantage points were the same. Each cube pulsed in its own time, building toward a synergetic whole. Washes of blue melded into gold and back again, dissolving and reforming. It was as if pixelation became tactile, a real-life bitmap suspended in space.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rooted in mathematics\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a voxel structure, it\u2019s suspended LED strands,\u201d said Susan Narduli, the architect and artist behind the Strauch Hypercube. \u201cI love this idea of this very, very pure, simple form within that volume. And to me, it also has a relationship to mathematics: a Cartesian grid, engineering principles, that kind of logical form.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Strauch Hypercube is a generative work. It is in conversation with itself, parsing the data encoded into its LED framework to create an infinite supply of visual patterns that never repeat.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo basically the piece runs on algorithms,\u201d Narduli said. \u201cThere\u2019s a library of content, and it shifts from one to the next. It cycles through, but even when it comes back to the same algorithm, it\u2019s always shifting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike static artwork, the Hypercube performs more like a system. The piece was built using TouchDesigner as the primary platform, a \u201creal-time, node-based programming environment\u201d that merges visual coding, data integration and procedural generation. \u201cIt allows the artwork to behave like a living system, where logic, data and light interact dynamically to form evolving visual structures,\u201d Narduli said.<\/p>\n These algorithms generate animations modeled after scientific concepts drawn from Berkeley Engineering\u2019s academic disciplines. One sequence, inspired by fluid dynamics<\/a> to represent environmental and energy engineering, appears as a gold-and-blue color pattern, an engaging way to transform abstract concepts into a visual experience.<\/p>\n As she progressed through her slide deck at the October ceremony, Narduli paused on an algorithm<\/a> inspired by Physarum polycephalum. \u201c\u200b\u200bNow this was something I\u2019d never heard about,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is apparently a slime mold growth.\u201d<\/p>\n Just then, a shimmering wave of light flowed through the Strauch Hypercube animation on the Jarvis Auditorium screen, as the audience watched patterns move through the structure. \u201cLook how beautiful it is, right?\u201d she added.<\/p>\n The work, Narduli explained later, emerged directly from the interdisciplinary nature of engineering.<\/p>\n The Strauch Hypercube \u201cabsolutely came out of the fact that this was this forum of thought and all these different engineering disciplines coming together in one space,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was the genesis for the piece.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Filling an architectural void\u00a0<\/p>\n When Narduli first met donor Roger Strauch \u2014 who with his brother, Hans, funded the installation in honor of their father, Karl \u2014 he described how he imagined a dynamic artwork filling the volume of the space. An engineer, Roger was looking for something resembling \u201ca lava-like flow of light that would subtly move the building occupants to be at once inquisitive and thoughtful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That sparked the idea for the Hypercube\u2019s small, reflective cubes that disperse from the center like exploding pixels.<\/p>\n It was a visual concept that nestled neatly into the Grimes Engineering Center\u2019s open-concept atrium. Narduli, who was \u201ctaken by the simple, pure geometries of the building,\u201d went to work on a structure that \u201cwould appear to float within the large, open volume.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The floating effect is made possible, in part, by the architectural addition of the Buckling-Restrained Brace (BRB) \u2014 an earthquake-preventative feature developed<\/a> at Berkeley \u2014 in conjunction with shape memory alloys (SMAs). This first-of-its-kind<\/a> use of SMAs allows the Strauch Hypercube to remain unobstructed across the atrium\u2019s vast interior.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Strauch Hypercube is an important piece of art that we don\u2019t want the floor movement to lead to its damage. The damage happens from the floor acceleration,\u201d said Khalid Mosalam, professor of civil engineering, during the event<\/a>. \u201cWhen the floor accelerates, it leads to forces going to what\u2019s on top of this floor and leads to the toppling of something or breaking of it. So there was a reduction of the floor acceleration as well with the use of this innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n Igniting innovation at UC Berkeley<\/p>\n \u201cEphemerality\u201d is the word Narduli returns to when describing light as the central feature of the installation. That idea has a significant application to Grimes Engineering Center as a public space designed to foster the intellectual evolution of Berkeley Engineering students.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I was primarily thinking about was this building [was] a living organism, at least metaphorically and functionally,\u201d Narduli said. \u201cSo I wanted the artwork to represent that, to be part of that organism.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/20251025_DeansSociety_NB_bic_0121a-1-450x675.jpg\")
The Strauch Hypercube is a generative work. It is in conversation with itself, parsing the data encoded into its LED framework to create an infinite supply of visual patterns that never repeat. (Photo by Noah Berger)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/20251025_DeansSociety_NB_bic_0895a-1013x675.jpg\")
The Strauch Hypercube\u2019s algorithms generate animations modeled after scientific concepts drawn from Berkeley Engineering\u2019s academic disciplines. (Photo by Noah Berger)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/20251025_DeansSociety_NB_bic_0819c-464x675.jpg\")
Narduli, who was \u201ctaken by the simple, pure geometries of the building,\u201d went to work on a structure that \u201cwould appear to float within the large, open volume.\u201d\u00a0(Photo by Noah Berger)<\/p>\n