The Snub Cube in the Glanville Courtyard of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology
WILLIAM P. SCHAEF E R
n the central (G lanviUe) cour.tyard of the in a hydroxyphosphale complex form in th e co re, recently constructed Beckman lnslilute surrounded by the organi c protein she ll. T hus, building al th e Ca lifornia Inslilule of the molecule can be claimed by biology, organic Technology is a fountain, placed th e re by chemislry, and in organic chemi stry, a ll three th e architect, Mr. Tim Vreeland, to create fi eld s that were lo be e mphasized in th e BPrk- William P. Schaefer, someI "while noise" and Urns separate acoustical- man Institute. I larry asked me to design some ly four areas of th e courtyard designed for con- thing for th e courtya rd fountain lhal would rap- California Institute of versalional groups. The architect asked for help tu re th e essence of the re rrilin structure. Technology, from U1 e future occupants of The essence or any strucl ure the building in designing th e is its symmetry 12J; this " as the Pasadena, California 91125 fountain itself; several sug- obvious starling point fo r the gestions w e re made and re design. And because I nm a jected by the Ca l.tech admin cr ystallographe r, symmetry was istration as not havin g any a handy Looi for me Lo use. I relationsh ip Lo Lh e purpose of looked in U1 e Jntemational Ta th e building. Arnold 0. Beck bles for X- Ray Crystallogmphy ma n, th e donor of U1 e build [5] and found th e simples! spare in g, had specifi ed th at he group that had 452 symmetry; wa nted this Institute to devel Lhal tw·n s out Lo be space group op new me thods and inslru #207, a cubi c space grou p with m enls that would advance re symme try P452 and 24 general search in U1 e fi elds of biology equi va le nt positions, just the and che mislsy, including same as the number of subunit U1 e ir inte rface. Aller Olff lat in lh e fe rritin molecul e. In or est suggestion had been re de r Lo visualize this strucLU re, I jected, Ha rry B. Gray, U1en the Director-desig used the compute r program 01\TEP, written by nate or the Beckman Institute (now Director), Ca rroll Johnson 14], and placed an arbitrary atom recall ed a pape r [11 describing U1 e tertiary struc in U1 e unit cell. The progra m used the 452 s~ m ture or th e iron-containing protein ferrilin; the me try of th e space group Lo gene rate th e other 25 mol ecul e of fe rrilin was fotmd to have 452 (read equiva le nt atoms and U1 e n drew a picture of Ule as four, three, two) symmetry; i.e., it has foLLI·fo ld result. J discovered that by joining Lh e "atoms" I axes, threefold axes, and twofold axes relating had generated by "bond ,'' l had Ul e outline of a Three views of the snub th e 24 subunits oflhe protein. solid; l could ary th e shape of th e solid by cube sculpture (1996) ow, the re rrilin prote in seem ed Lo Ha rry changin g the po ili on of th e arbitrary "atom" I Gray Lo be an excell e nt symbol for the work that sta rted with. The solid had 6 quare fa ces and 32 pages 48-50. wou ld be done in the new building. Ferrilin is triangul ar ones, with 24· corne rs. The corners, Close-up. found in plants a nd a nimals alike; il is an iron th en, would re present conreplua ll y th e subunits (Photo by I. Hargittai) slorage protein containing up to 4500 iron atoms of the ferrilin molecul e. So me or th e tri angular
€l I 9 9 G S P I\ I N G E 11 - V I•: 11 I. A G N le W Y 0 I\ K • I r> C. by William P. Schaefer)
ra ces co uld be either acute or obtuse, and I made fa ce of such a solid. He was used lo building paper models of both kinds to see which was much more symmetric fountains and was skepti more pl easin g to U1 e eye. I fa vored U1 e solid witll cal about this. A wooden m odel, though, showed som ewhat acute triangular faces, but my col that with a sufficiently strong fl ow, th e entire league Ve rner Schomaker pointed out tllat tlle surface of the solid could be wet; we were given solid with all equilateral triangles was special: it the go-ahead to install a fi ve-foot-tall, granite is ca lled the snub cube, and Ve rn er said tllat it snub cube in the fountain. The granite chosen was one or Linus Pauling's fa vorite solids. (The was a green variety from Africa. It was qu arried 0U1 er was th e i.cosahedron.) It is in fact an tllere and shipped to Italy for culling into slabs, Archimeclean semiregul ar so lid , derived from a and the slabs were shipped to California. The cube and havi ng only two kinds of fa ces, squares subcontractor charged with fabricating tile actu and equilateral tri angles, with all its edges of al fountain claimed not to be able to build such a equal length. complicated form, so I used til e ORTEP program (There are two other fa cts about tll e snub again to calculate all of th e inter-facial angles cube that m ay be of interest. First, despite its ap iliat he needed to know, and I gave him precise parently high symmetry, wilh all sorts of rota measw·ements to work from. With U1 e e mea tional axes running through it, it has no planes of sw·em ents and angles, tile man wen t ahead with refl ection; it exi sts in two forms, one left-handed fabrication , first flaming lhe outer sw·fa ce of th e and the other right-handed. Second, as witll any granite to roughen it and produce something Uial semiregular solid, lh e snub cube can be in scribed in a sphere. In tl1is case, lhe 24 points on the sphere represent the distribution for which U1 e small est distance between any two is as great as possible (5].) Th e model I made of tile snub cube pleased Jay A. Labinger, th e architect as well as lhe Administration, and Wiiiiam P. Schaefer, and we decided to use a snub cube as th e decorative element i11 tlle fountain of tlle Beckman Institute. Verner Schomaker on The contractor who was to build this, tilough , in February 19, 1996. sisted on mal\ing a half-sized m odel first to see if (Photo by I. Hargittai) water could be made to fl ow evenly over the sur-
OCTOllE ll 1 996 49 With the Beckman Institute in the background.
(Photo by William P. Schaefer)
would be as hydrophilic as possible, and then at the snub cube fountain itself was recognized by taching the cut slabs of granite to a stainless the City of Pasadena in 1992 as one of the ten best steel armature he had built to my specifications. examples of public art in the city. The citation The plumbers would later run a pipe up through recognized as "artists" of the sculpture Harry B. the snub cube to clischarge water over the top, so Gray and William P. Schaefer, the first time ei it would flow down the sides and into the pond at ther of us had won such a distinction. We contin the bottom, to create the white noise the archi ue to be pleased with our work. tect wanted. The final granite construction is five feet across, from square face to square face, and, REFERENCES because of its cubic symmetry, also five feet tall. 1. Smith, J. M. A.; Ford , G. C. ; Harrison, P M. Biochem Soc. Trans. It rests on a cylindrical pedestal of green granite 1988, 16, 836. about 18 inches high, so the top of the snub cube 2. Holden, A. Shapes, Space and Symmetry, Dover Publications: New is visible only to quite tall people, or from the up York , 1991 ; 45. per floors of the building. 3. International Tables tor X-Ray Crystallography, Volume A; D. Reidel: The fountain, with its impressive granite snub Dordrecht, Holland , 1983; 624. cube, has been functioning for nearly six years. 4. Johnson, C. K. ORTEP II, Report ORNL-5138, Oak Ridge National The Beckman Institute building won an award Laboratory, U.S.A. 1976. given by Pasadena Beautiful for the most beauti 5. Coxeter, H. S. M. Introduction to Geometry, 2nd ed. ; John Wiley & fuJ noncommercial. buil 50 THE C HEMI C AL I N T E LLIGE NCE R