Wooden Imaginary Cube Sculpture

This is a wooden version of the same object shown in the previous sculpture.
Woodwork by: Hiroshi Nakagawa

There are exactly 16 types of minimal convex Imaginary Cubes, including the regular tetrahedron, cuboctahedron, H-shape, and T-shape. Since 16 is 4×4, we wondered whether it might be possible to arrange all 16 of them in a way where they are joined at their vertices, and where the entire structure itself would become another Imaginary Cube. This sculpture is the result of that idea. It appears square from three orthogonal directions, satisfying the condition of being an Imaginary Cube. In the last photo, the object is seen reflected from two of these directions simultaneously using mirrors.

The sculpture consists of four parts, each of which is an Imaginary Cube. These four Imaginary Cubes are connected via T-shaped "holes" made only from edges. This T-shaped structure is the same configuration found at the center of the Puzzle version. All four Imaginary Cubes are mounted onto a central frame made of edges forming a regular octahedron.

• Created: February 2010
• Special Thanks: Hiroshi Nakagawa, Kei Terayama