This is the object I created to commemorate President Reagan's
inauguration.
It's called prism, and it's inspired by his three pillars--
community, discovery, and service.
And so I sort of thought of those three
as being related and codependent.
So I created a three-sided pyramid
that would look like a single object,
but wouldn't function with any of the three pieces removed.
I wanted to express the individuality
of the pieces in some way, and so each of the three sides
is made of an individual material.
Community is a transparent, open material.
Discovery is wood, it's strong and flexible.
And then surface is steel, it's the strongest
of the three sides.
It has a heft weight, but it's supportive of the whole.
In the way they relate to each other,
the third side of each face is the next material over,
and so there is this constant suggestion of the next phase.
There's a torsion in it.
But when you look at the form from above,
the three elements become equal.
It's an energy upwards.
It's an energy towards the future.
There's also a little bit of tension in the structure
because, although it's a pyramid, which
is a very stable shape, it's made up of three pieces which
are leaning on each other.
So there's this active participation
by the three parts of the structure to create the whole.
This dynamic is similar to that here at UVA.
It's only through each of our roles
working together that we create the future that
will be the UVA community.