Stratascape — the first creative collaboration between Asymptote and Karim Rashid — an immersive installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, exploring novel formations through digital manipulation and new material technologies.
Stratascape was the first creative collaboration between Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture, principals of Asymptote Architecture, and Karim Rashid, Hani’s brother and principal of the design firm Karim Rashid, Inc. Presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, the installation explored novel formations made possible through digital manipulation and the use of new material technologies, occupying the ICA’s main gallery and transforming it into an inhabitable landscape beneath suspended biomorphic forms.
The Installation
Two large biomorphic sculptural forms — M-Scapes — were suspended from the gallery ceiling, their surfaces illuminated with projected color that shifted between vivid green and deep blue. Below, the gallery floor was replaced with an undulating landscape of grey felt, sculpted into an organic topography of mounds, valleys, and reclining surfaces. Visitors were invited to inhabit this terrain — sitting, reclining, or lying within its contours while gazing up at the hovering forms above.
Light and Media
Video monitors mounted between the suspended forms displayed digital architectural content — renderings, animations, and spatial explorations from Asymptote’s practice. The projected light from the M-Scapes cast a continuously shifting ambient atmosphere across the gallery, transforming the space from a conventional exhibition into an immersive environment where the boundaries between viewing art and inhabiting architecture dissolved.
A Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
Stratascape brought together architecture and industrial design through the Rashid brothers’ distinct but complementary practices. The installation represented a key moment in the development of Asymptote’s M-Scape vocabulary — biomorphic forms hovering between the automotive and the anatomical, between furniture and architecture. At ICA, these forms operated simultaneously as sculptures, light sources, and spatial definers, while the felt landscape below inverted the conventional gallery relationship between viewer and object, making the visitor part of the work itself.
