ACCUMULUS is a site-specific installation by graduate architecture students in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Composed of over seventeen thousand lightweight, interlocking wire and plastic parts, the installation is positioned within the cantilevered space above CAM’s entryway. Its clear, reflective, and semi-opaque materials in varying shapes interact with changing sunlight throughout the day, dappling the sidewalk and walls below with shadows and prismatic effects.

Hidden within the entryway cantilever, ACCUMULUS can only be seen directly as visitors enter the building, while the play of light and shadow it creates are noticeable from a distance. With its accumulation of numerous small forms and textures, the installation provides a light-filled contrast to the heavy and planar surfaces of the Museum building. Investigating geometric assemblies that produce structure as well as an intriguing interaction with light and material, students hand-assembled each unit of plastic and wire, gradually building a monumental intervention that is as much about welcome and curiosity as it is about optics and perception.