The 20-foot-high installation only weighs 500 pounds. (courtesy Brandon Shigeta)

Made from approximately 14,000 pieces, Bloom is the first architectural application of a laminated metal material that includes nickel and manganese with a bit of iron.

Architecture has long been valued for its static nature and sense of permanence. Increasingly, however, architects are working to make buildings more responsive to their users and to the climate. Often this is accomplished through mechanical means, but architect Doris Kim Sung, principal of LA-based DOSU studio architecture, is looking at how building materials themselves can be responsive, integrating changeability into the structure itself.

The dramatic shell-like form of her recent pavilion, called Bloom, suggests, at first glance, that Sung is interested in cutting-edge digital design. While this is certainly the case, Bloom’s true innovation happens more slowly, through the bending of its metal panels according to heat levels generated by the sun.

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