Phragmi Tripudium.Nourishing Perception Through Observation
Site-responsive object: Phragmi Tripudium is an experimental design project exploring observation and embodied experience as tools for making. Through prolonged engagement with a selected site in Otaniemi, Finland, allowing wind, reeds, sound, and movement to lead the design process, while the designer’s role became one of observing and interpreting, eventually taking physical form as a glass wind chime.
Observation gradually became participation. After initially tracing the movement of the reeds by hand, brushes were attached directly to them, allowing the wind and plants to produce their own drawings. Rain, changing wind conditions, irregular marks, and other unexpected elements were accepted as part of the process. These traces became a form of exchange between human and non-human ways of making, translating movement and environmental conditions into visual information without fully predetermining the outcome.
The experience eventually developed into a wind chime designed to move and sound within the same environment that informed it. Its irregular blown-glass bell translates the trajectory and movement observed in the reeds, while its hot-sculpted glass pendants directly translate the drawings made by the reeds themselves. Birch from the surrounding context was incorporated into the clapper and support, connecting material, movement, and sound back to the place. The thickness of the blown glass was considered as part of achieving a deeper resonant sound.
The name Phragmi Tripudium brings together Phragmites australis, the common reed at the center of the project, and tripudium, a Latin term associated with a solemn, ritualistic and rhythmic dance. “The dance of the reeds” refers to the almost choreographic movement that first drew attention to the landscape and eventually became an active collaborator in the design process. The object serves as a tangible manifestation of an embodied experience of place, asking how observation, intuition, and sensitivity toward our surroundings might lead to more context-responsive and human ways of making.
Design: Marcelo Guajardo Dávila
Status: Produced
Exhibitions:
- AAVA x Pursu Ry, “Water and Flow”, Inkoo (2025)
- UROBOROS Design Festival, Prague (2024)
- “Too Feral Otaniemi”, Aalto Space 21, Espoo (2024)
Publications:
- Aalto University - Experimental Design
Materials: Blown and hot-sculpted glass, birch wood
Methods: Site observation, walking, multisensory immersion, reed-generated drawing, glassblowing, hot-glass sculpting, sound experimentation, manual fabrication
Dimensions: 200x200x400 mm
Produced in: Espoo, Finland
Year: 2024
Photography: Marcelo Guajardo
Nature doesn’t need a designer. It needs an observer.