Screen I was developed back in 2012 at the start of my exploration into space-filling curves. I was curious about the architectural possibilities, and made both 3-dimensional and 2-dimensional studies. I liked the outcome, and a small set of 3 black and white prints was issued, one set of which was auctioned by the Deutches Architecturmuseum to raise funds.

After than the idea remained in the background, then as I developed the Net series over the last two years, it occurred to me that the screens had a similar semi-abstract character to the nets and would be a good companion set. I particularly like that they can be developed as breeze-blocks, and incorporated into architecture.

Screen I is based on a simple square space-filling curve, and came about because the curve ran through the corners of the square, which has all kinds of problems for tessellations and tiling designs. So I punched a hole at the corner of every square to get rid of the joining problem, and then explored how the curve could be expressed as differences in the space around the holes, the concentric rings being a kind of abstracted countour map of an uneven bevel around the hole. The technique can be applied to almost all space filling curves, and each screen has its own unique graphic character, despite having identical or very similar “breeze blocks”.

This design, if made in 3-dimensions, can actually be made with a single block, with a different design on the front and the back.