With Chinese New Year around the corner and to celebrate the year of the tiger, the multidisciplinary architectural practice LAVA have been commissioned to create a rather surprising sight.

Two giant digital origami tigers in orange will be burning brightly in the forecourt of Sydney’s Customs House from 11 February until 14 March.

Created by the visionary practice Laboratory for Visionary Architecture  – the crouching tigers play with a fusion of eastern tradition and western technology.

Inspired by “zhezhi” – the Chinese art of paper folding – the crouching tigers are as lightweight as their influence suggests, in keeping with the LAVA philosophy of ‘more with less’.

Raising awareness of the near extinction of the sacred tiger, the featherweight tigers are the size of a truck at 2.5 metres high and 7 metres long, yet weigh only 200kgs.

Made of fully recyclable materials, aluminium and barrisol, the folded felines are brought to life with low energy LED lighting.

“We also believe that humour belongs to architecture too, said Chris Bosse, Australian director of LAVA, “and so the tigers are playing soccer to kick off the FIFA world cup starting later this year”.

LAVA
l-a-v-a.net

Frame manufacturers: barrisolsydney.com.au