The Carbon Natural Project started when I first arrived in Wenzhou. I was inspired by the common things that surrounded me. I tried to use common things to make novel structural forms. The intention with this project is to find place in between two extremes found within the building industry: mass customized spaceframes, and mass produced uncustomized spaceframes.
The project attempted to do much of the early testing as a childrens toy, and has moved into full scale site specific and gallery installations throughout the world.
The project has had many successes including:
• March 29 2025 AMT2025 This exhibition featured work from the Valence Pavilions process.
• November 22 - 29 2024 [Xyl]ode Exhibition This solo exhibition included work using the Carbon Natural System to explore different joint configurations and material composites
• February 17 - Marhc 10 2023 TRILATERAL: Carbon Natural | Empirical Infinity | Particles of Light ( Internal Link ) ( IU Link ) TRILATERAL included "Asymmetrical Blizzard" a wall hung collaborative piece with a Neural Style Transfer Machine Learning Algorythm that etended into the space as sculpture.
• July 30, 2021 Wenzhou, CN - Molecular Logics and Traditional Wenzhou-made Materials, for Contemporary Sculpture Wenzhou Museum “Looking at Wenzhou from the World” Lecture Series
• July 5 - July 10,2021 Haikou, CN - Haikou University of Economics, Summer Workshop The Bohr Model - Scaling the Carbon Natural Project
• May 22 –June 11 2021 Wenzhou-Kean University – Public Architecture and Design Research Institute conference and exhibition Carbon Natural Exhibition
• April 28, 2021 WKU Student Research Day – Presentation and Poster
• January 2021 Guangzhou, CN - WoArt Charity Market Exhibition including “Cyclohexane”
• January, 2021 Wenzhou, CN - Site Specific Installation “The Bohr Model”, Aluminum plate(plasma cut) & tube, plus tensile fabric College of business and Public Management, Wenzhou-Kean University
• January 2021 Shanghai, CN - “The Fate of Pavilion: Provocations Leading to New Realities” Pavilion workshop Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts
• 2020 Shanghai, CN Carbon Natural - Using Molecular Logics as Inspiration in Micro-Bamboo Structures (Voted Best Paper) Proceedings of the 2019 digitalFutures, Tongji University, Springer
Steenblik R.S. (2020) Carbon Natural: Using Molecular Logics as Inspiration in Micro-Bamboo Structures. In: Yuan P., Xie Y., Yao J., Yan C. (eds) Proceedings of the 2019 DigitalFUTURES. CDRF 2019. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8153-9_6
• June 21, 2020 Box Elder County, Ut - Site Specific Installation “Carbon Alignment” 3D printed nodes and pine dowels
• July 08, 2019 Shanghai, CN – “Carbon Natural - Using Molecular Logics as Inspiration in Micro-Bamboo Structures” digitalFutures conference, Tongji University, College of Architecture and Urban Planning
• November 21, 2019 - “Hot Showers for the Homeless?” Published at FAVELissues Online Journal (favelissues.com)
• Fall 2019 Wenzhou, CN - Site Specific Installation “Cyclo”, 3D printed nodes and pine dowels
• October 20-26 2019, Oakland, Ca - Verge 19 Sustainable Transportation Conference, Exhibition, and Expo Commissioned a “Carbon Natural” Full scale interactive art installation entitled “Artemis ScienceFair” 3D printed nodes, pine dowels
Light weight tensile structural joint design research project. The project uses Conrad Weissman, Frei Otto, and integrity as inspiration and focuses on optimizing joint systems to be as flexible as possible while at the same time considering the economies of scale of mass production. At the same time strength weight ratio, material and fabrication costs, are important aspect of the design process.