Leontophone, Sebastien Leon Agneessens

We worked with artist Sebastien Leon Agneessens to produce Leontophone, a serpentine sculpture piece that emerges “from the encounter of op art and glam rock.”

Premiering at Brian Atwood’s New York showroom, the sculpture consists of 174 hexagonal, polished aluminum tiles which form a 30-foot-long, serpent-like figure.

To fix each individual tile in a precise location and angle, we made a plywood armature that supported threaded rods with swivel fittings. Using Grasshopper to generate a 3D model and translate the digital design to our CNC mill, we carefully laid out all 174 aluminum tiles onto cutsheets with each corresponding to a specific rods. The positions and lengths of the threaded rod as well as the angle of the swivels work together so that the complex, tessellated form could rise from a simplified plywood armature.