Name/Title
Temple of Wonder Stellated DodecahedronDescription
The large site-specific interactive sculpture was installed on the trail at the Museum of Arts and Sciences during 2017. Designed by a team of regional artists and engineers, the work is entitled the “Temple of Wonder” and based on the concept of Georgia-based artist Jen Upchurch. The structure is a 15-foot tall/15-foot wide stellated dodecahedron. The three-dimensional geometric shape serves as a fun immersive teaching tool; as the 5th Platonic Solid, it represents the cosmos and is a perfect blend of art and science.
The sculpture is intended to be interactive and serves as a unique immersive geometry lesson. Visitors are asked not to climb the sculpture due to the risk of falling. However, we do encourage visitors to enter and reflect upon the wonders of the universe. In geometry, the stellated dodecahedron is a Kepler-Poinsot polyhedron, named by Arthur Cayley, and with Schläfli symbol {5/2,5}. It is one of four non-convex regular polyhedra.
It is simply 12 stars, or pentagrammic faces, with five pentagrams meeting at each vertex. The term "stellated" means that the polyhedron can be created by extending the faces of the dodecahedron. The stellated dodecahedron is made up of 12 tips with 5 isosceles triangles in each tip for a total of 60 triangles. The brightly colored panels of the Museum’s sculpture are perforated with even more five-pointed stars, adding yet another layer of geometry and providing small star-shaped windows through which visitors may view the sky.