Steel Magnolia

As two dozen fifth-graders in hard hats watched Wednesday, the new kinetic sculpture at the California Science Center opened like a giant industrial rosebud in bloom, its shape and size changing dramatically in just a few minutes.

The 5,000-pound aluminum structure, known as the Hypar for its hyperbolic paraboloid shape, expanded from a diameter of 15 feet to 50 feet, the smooth motion of its 2,500 aluminum links controlled by a computer at the sculpture’s base.

When the extensively revamped California Museum of Science and Industry opens in February as the California Science Center, the Hypar will be the centerpiece of the museum’s rebuilt atrium. From its top level, the atrium will offer a sweeping view of the adjacent Exposition Park rose gardens, the USC campus and downtown.

Museum officials said the Hypar--with the help of an interactive learning station--will help visitors understand the powers of computer-aided design and manufacturing, as well as the mathematical equations that define the sculpture’s changing shape, museum officials said.

The Hypar, said Ann Muscat, the center’s deputy director for exhibits and education, demonstrates how scientists use mathematical equations to express relationships between forces like tension and compression.

“Motion and transformation is a very compelling experience,” said the Hypar’s creator, New York-based mechanical engineer and sculptor Chuck Hoberman. “There’s kind of a living quality to something that transforms . . . there’s something deep within us that responds to pure mathematical forms.”

Indeed, most of Wednesday’s audience of schoolchildren, museum staff and media representatives were transfixed by the continuously unfolding and contracting art work, whose shape resembles a lacy metal wave, a bow tie or a tight S curve depending on the visitor’s viewpoint and the phase of the Hypar’s expansion.

With the hum of the artwork’s motor and sounds of ongoing construction as backdrop, the visitors’ only audible reaction was: “Wow.”

Which was music to the ears of museum directors.

“We wanted it to connect immediately with people on an emotional level, but we also knew it has all these scientific and mathematical principles at work,” Muscat said.

She said the planned learning station will allow visitors to alter the variables in the Hypar’s equation and see the effects on screen.

The Science Center’s sculpture is the largest ever built by Hoberman, who holds several patents for his unfolding structures. His works have been exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Liberty Science Center in New Jersey and Technorama der Schweiz in Switzerland.

Hoberman and machinist Bill Record devoted 2 1/2 years to the project, spending two months on computer-aided stress analysis to determine the final size of the individual metal links and 18 months manufacturing them.

The six pie-slice-shaped sections of the Hypar took a month to install, Record said.

When the 245,000-square-foot Science Center is completed, it will include exhibits called the Living World, about the Earth’s life forms, and the Creative World, about technology, as well as room for traveling exhibits.

Later, the World of the Pacific and Worlds Beyond features will be added. A new seven-story, 3-D IMAX theater is also being added, completing a $130-million transformation of the museum.

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Subsequent phases of development include a neighborhood school with emphasis on math and science. The school is being planned in coordination with the Los Angeles Unified School District and USC, and is projected to open in 2000.

With the Hypar hovering above their heads, students from nearby Trinity Street Elementary School spent Wednesday morning experimenting with small-scale kinetic sculptures.

Ten-year-old Daniel Aguirre boasted of a structure of wooden ice cream sticks and metal brads that he and three classmates built.

“Our project was the greatest, so they’re gonna keep it so the other kids in the world can see it,” he said.

Classmate Juan Diego, also 10, suggested that the project, which expanded from an eight-inch to a three-foot circle, might be used as a pen for small animals.

Museum teacher-in-residence Judy Boobar said she asked to keep the boys’ creation, since it was a form she had not seen built during pretesting of the project.

“Activities like this show me the kind of confidence that comes from it,” Boobar said.