Rust Cathedral

The brief

The client wanted somewhere that had clearly been abandoned twice — once by the people who built it, once by whoever came after. That second occupation is the whole story of the piece: scaffolding welded into the arches, cabling stapled along the columns, a generator that stopped running a long time ago.

Build notes

The shell is printed in twelve tiles with a PLA core to keep the mass down and the warping predictable. Water is a two-part resin poured in four shallow layers so the debris could be positioned at different depths.

Finishing

Lighting is four warm LEDs on a hidden dimmer, run through fibre optics for the candle points. Rust is enamel, applied wet and pulled downward with a flat brush so the streaks follow the real drainage lines of the geometry.