IGIRAMA — WILLIAM VERSTRAETEN
Studio Waldbach assisted with several ambitious projects by the late Dutch artist William Verstraeten. One of them was the Igirama project: Igirama, as coined by William, is a spherical panorama, with an equirectangular image printed on the inside of a hemisphere, about 12 to 30 meters in diameter, reflected on a giant disc-shaped mirror on the floor. It gives the visitor who enters the Igirama a sense of walking in the sky.
Artist William Verstraeten at work with a miniature prototype Igirama. This one for a location close to the nuclear power facility in Zeeland, The Netherlands. Other proposed locations for a bespoke Igirama installation were the WTC Memorial Museum in New York City, Doha in Qatar, Hiroshima, and others.
Studio Waldbach programmed a web application based on the Google Earth API, to help measure and produce the curved strokes that were to be used inside an Igirama maquette.
The interface of the Igirama Automator, as the web app was baptized. With a floating, collapsible instrument panel, any view of any location could precisely be measured. It also included rulers that could be moved and rotated with high precision.
A bird’s eye view render that Studio Waldbach produced for presentation in Doha, Qatar.
Another render of the Doha Igirama.
The projects garnered a lot of global media attention. The Twin Towers Igirama was also presented on TEDx Amsterdam.
Studio Waldbach contributed to the realization of this video presentation, which also serves as an explainer video. This one was produced specifically for the New York Twin Towers Igirama.