Polyform is a system of geometric volumes — prisms, cubes, polyhedra — that ship as flat die-cut sheets and fold by hand into rigid projection surfaces. Alexander Kuiava designed it in Vienna around 2015, while producing visuals for object video mapping and looking for something lighter than plywood to project them onto.
Combined like a construction set, the modules build stage decorations, club installations and interior sculptures of almost any size. They mount on walls, ceilings, platforms and stage floors, come apart as easily as they went up, and travel to the next venue in the boot of a car.
Role & Scope
- Concept & product design
- Structural & die-cut development
- Material selection
- Object mapping content
- Brand & art direction
Project Facts
- Designed in Vienna, 2014–2015
- Matte cardboard, produced in Austria
- Born out of festival stage production
- Status: production paused, returning at FrontFX
Vienna, 2014 → 2015
“We were building wooden sets that cost more to move than to make.”
The origin: a stage problem, solved on paper
Around 2014 Alexander Kuiava was producing visuals for object video mapping and working with an Austrian production company on festival stages, including YMMD Events and Frequency FM4. The visuals were ready long before the surfaces were. Every projection object had to be built by hand from timber — a slow, expensive process that produced structures nobody wanted to move twice.
Weight was the real enemy. Large wooden geometry is rigid in the wrong sense: it resists changes to the set, it eats crew hours, it needs a truck, and after the show it usually ends up in a skip. Testing a new visual meant commissioning a new object, which made experimentation a budget question rather than a creative one.
The answer turned out to be paper engineering. Instead of building volumes, Polyform ships them unfolded: dense, high-quality cardboard cut and creased as a flat net. Applying the logic of origami, a single sheet becomes a rigid prism, cube or polyhedron in a few minutes, by hand, without a workshop. Several of those volumes combine into a composition, and a composition scales into a full stage set.
That produced two connected bodies of work rather than one. On one side, the visual content for object mapping. On the other, a physical system for building the surfaces that content is projected onto — designed, named and prototyped as Polyform.
2015
Year the Polyform system was designed in Vienna
6
Design principles the whole system is built on
100
%
Cardboard — recyclable, reusable, made in Austria
A projection surface should fold flat and travel light.
Everything in the system follows from that sentence: the flat net, the matte surface, the connection holes, the choice of cardboard over timber.
How the Polyform system works
Three ideas carry the whole design, and each of them removes a cost from projection mapping production.
From flat net to volume
Each object arrives as a die-cut and creased sheet — a mapping net rather than a finished shape. Folding it by hand produces a rigid geometric volume in minutes, with no workshop, no power tools and no specialist crew. Shipping stays flat, storage stays flat, and the objects come apart again at the end of the night instead of being thrown away.
A construction set, not a set piece
A single Polyform volume is a sculpture; a dozen of them are a stage. The modules were designed to be combined, stacked, rotated and repeated, with several shaped openings that let them attach to walls, ceilings, trusses, platforms and floors. Because the composition is modular, the same boxes serve a small club one weekend and a festival stage the next.
Matte by design
The material is not ordinary packaging. Polyform uses a dense matte cardboard chosen specifically for projection: it diffuses light evenly, avoids the hotspots and glare a glossy surface throws back at the audience, and holds a clean edge where two planes meet. It is produced in Austria, it is recyclable, and it can be reused across many events.
Six principles, and every one of them buys back time on site.
Easy to transport, assemble and take apart. Reusable across many events. Light enough for any wall, ceiling, platform or stage surface. A matte cardboard made for video projections and light installations. Shaped openings for simple connection to almost any structure. High-quality material, produced in Austria. Leave more time for the party.
Flat-pack transport
Multiple use
Ultra lightweight
Matte projection surface
Simple connection
Made in Austria
Where Polyform belongs
Most club walls are a projectionist’s disappointment: flat, painted and unremarkable. A cluster of Polyform volumes gives the room geometry to break, so the same VJ set suddenly has depth, edges and shadow instead of a rectangle of light.
Because the objects fold flat, a touring VJ can carry a stage design in the same case as the projector. Set-up takes an afternoon instead of a build day, and the decoration goes home again after the night.
Festival production is a race against load-in time. Modular cardboard geometry can be prepared off site, carried in flat, assembled by a small crew and re-arranged between acts — which is precisely the flexibility a timber set never offers.
The system was designed inside exactly this pressure, on Austrian festival productions, where the cost of moving a set had become larger than the cost of designing one.
Away from the stage the same volumes behave like sculpture. Mounted on a wall or suspended from a ceiling, lit by a small projector or a single lamp, they turn a showroom, a lobby, a restaurant or a living room into a piece of light design.
This was the quiet ambition behind the project: bring the language of large projection shows down to a scale a single person can carry home and install without a crew.
A surface is only half the work. The matching object mapping visuals exist as both isometric animations and true unwrapped mapping maps, so content can be aligned to the geometry instead of guessed at.
The volumes also respond well to the monochrome depth of Video Mapping Loops, since a folded edge does exactly what a facade cornice does: it turns a gradient into a shadow.
Status
“Polyform is paused, not finished.”
Two halves of one idea
Most projection mapping work treats content and surface as separate trades: someone animates, someone else builds. Polyform came from refusing that split. Kuiava built both sides himself. The same person who needed the visuals designed the object they would land on, and each side improved the other — a fold was added because a gradient needed an edge, a loop was re-timed because a prism read better slowly.
Production and sales of the physical Polyform elements are currently paused. The system, the die-cut geometry and the accompanying object mapping content all remain intact, and the plan is to bring the objects back through FrontFX. Until then this page stands as the record of how it was designed and what it was for.
The idea underneath has not aged. Events are still asked to be lighter, faster to build and less wasteful, and a stage set that arrives as a flat sheet and leaves as a flat sheet answers all three questions at once.
Polyform FAQ
What is Polyform?
Polyform is a modular system of geometric cardboard objects — prisms, cubes and polyhedra — made as projection surfaces for 3D video mapping and light installations. Each object ships flat as a die-cut net and folds by hand into a rigid volume; several volumes combine into stage decorations, club installations or interior sculptures.
Why cardboard instead of wood or plastic?
Weight and time. Timber geometry is slow to build, heavy to transport and inflexible once assembled. A dense matte cardboard is light enough to hang from a ceiling, strong enough to hold its shape, cheap enough to be experimented with, recyclable at the end of its life, and matte enough to take projected light without glare.
How are the objects assembled?
By hand, using the logic of origami. The sheet arrives cut and creased, so folding it along the pre-scored lines produces a finished volume in minutes without tools or a workshop. Shaped openings in the design let the objects be joined to each other and fixed to walls, ceilings, platforms and stage surfaces.
Can Polyform objects be used more than once?
Yes — that was one of the design goals. The volumes can be taken apart after an event, stored flat and rebuilt for the next one. A set that travels well and survives storage is a set a production company can amortise across a season instead of writing off after one night.
What kind of visuals are projected onto them?
Content made for object mapping. It exists in two forms: isometric animations that read correctly from the audience position, and true unwrapped mapping maps that follow the geometry face by face. The library is published as object mapping visuals at Video Mapping Store.
Can Polyform be bought right now?
Not at the moment. Production and sales of the physical elements are paused. The system is intended to return through FrontFX; until then, the object mapping visuals remain available and enquiries about the project are welcome.
Mix your venue
with art.
Leave more time
for the party.
Polyform production is paused for now. The object mapping visuals made for these shapes are available today, and the objects themselves will return through FrontFX.
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