US architect creates paper 'forest' inside museum

Washington : Jeanne Gang has dedicated her life to using architecture and design to connect people of various backgrounds who otherwise would not interact.

So when the architect noticed how difficult it was to hear someone standing just 10 feet (three meters) away in the Great Hall of Washington's cavernous National Building Museum, she set about tackling how to change this feeling of "being out in the open in a giant agricultural field."

Her answer: building three tall, interconnected domed structures using more than 2,500 interlocking wound paper tubes that are lightweight, recyclable and renewable. 

Simultaneously monumental and intimate, the domes transform light and sound while also encouraging social interaction.

Inside the two smaller domes, visitors are invited to play instruments made of commonplace construction materials like copper pipes, wrenches and drainage pipes.

"This would be similar to standing in a clearing in a forest where you can have a conversation, make music, and you would be able to hear the things around you," Gang told AFP.

The installation, dubbed "Hive," opens Thursday and runs through September 4. 

Gang, a MacArthur "genius" fellow and French legion of honor recipient who presented a translucent marble curtain here in 2003, heads the architecture and urban design collective Studio Gang. It has been acclaimed for its innovative work on projects like the Aqua Tower in Chicago or the Taipei Pop Music Center.

It's also one of two finalists in a competition to redesign the Tour Montparnasse skyscraper in Paris, which Gang says "aims to bring community but still preserve this monumentality."