Rift is one of two installations created for Line – Plane – Space: The Studio of Architectonic Thinking, an exhibition presenting work by second-year architecture students at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME). The project grew out of the Form and Composition 2 course, where students move from two-dimensional compositions towards spatial studies through a series of manual exercises.
After I was invited to give an inspirational presentation for the students’ year-end exhibition, I shared my work and approach to spatial and formal exploration. This led me to develop an installation in response to the students’ exercises and the course itself.
One of the exercises begins with two lines cutting through a plane. Students develop planar compositions through operations such as dividing, shifting and rotating elements. I was interested in how these rules could be described as a computational process. The exercises already contain a kind of computational thinking: preset operations guide the compositions, even when the work is done by hand. I made this underlying logic explicit by building a node-based generative system. Rather than reproducing individual student works, Rift uses the geometric principles behind the exercises to generate its own spatial compositions.
The system transforms the two lines through rotation and translation. Their intersections and the elevation of surfaces are generated through repeating patterns, producing a range of related spatial forms.
The installation makes both the generated forms and their underlying rules visible. The portrait-oriented loop combines side and top projections with an isometric view of the composition and an analytical view of the node-based algorithm. Light and sound bring the process into the exhibition space, turning a set of geometric operations into a visual experience. A companion installation, Morphogenesis, develops this line of exploration further.
Rift was later included in my Digital Therapy solo exhibition in 2025.