Wunderbugs is an interactive wooden pavilion with sensors collecting environmental changes and allowing insects to modulate music.

It's a project curated and designed by Francesco Lipari and Vanessa Todaro from OFL Architecture (co-authors of Sainthorto) and has been released for the first time during the second edition of the Maker Faire Europe and within the space of the hanging gardens of the Auditorium Parco Della Musica in Rome.

The entire pavilion was realised in wood combining traditional techniques and computer-numerical control machines. Inspired by the typical shapes of the Roman Baroque, hybridized with geometries that the insects are capable of producing, the pavilion was seen as an aggregation of repetitive and simple elements.

Wunderbugs can assume infinite configurations thanks to its modularity realized through the careful combination of 1104 arc modules, 92 rhombuses which allow to alternate and adjust the pavilion’s fullness or emptiness, and 198 knobs in wood that regulate the circular or curvilinear progress.

The project takes advantage of the valuable collaboration of Chiara Settanni (biologist), Marco Pesoli (sound engineer), Vincenzo Core (composer) and Sebastian Di Guardo (architect).

Wunderbugs’ undisputed protagonist is the world of insects.

Within Wunderbugs six spherical interactive ecosystems are equipped with Arduino and sensors for motion, humidity, temperature and intensity of sunlight. This data, combined with the information collected by a network of ultrasonic sensors able to detect the position of the visitors, is used to modulate in real time the Wunderbugs musical composition implementing a complete integration between architecture and environment.

By playing with technology, the architecture and pavilion’s geometry create an outdoor room equipped with an audio installation in which the music makes through combining nature and human an inseparable (and abstract) relationship with the world’s harmony.