Excavations: Architect Nick Polansky Uses Waterjets for Art

A decade ago, during an artist’s residency at Autodesk’s Pier 9 Workshop in San Francisco, MIT-educated architect Nick Polansky, 41, began exploring hardwood’s resilience when he cut it with a CNC waterjet. The precise cuts he could make with high-pressure jets, “without hollowing out its strength,” fascinated him. He could even pull out chunks of wood in unexpected forms with minimal waste beyond the cut’s slender kerf.

Now, Polansky has revisited that interest at NWP, his architecture and art studio in the Mission, with the help of a Sausalito fabricator. His latest work, Hydra, includes curved and linear forms excavated from weathered 3-foot-high offcuts of thick redwood and fir beams. “It’s like cutting through the core of a tree from two directions—horizontal and vertical,” Polansky explains.

Some shapes nest back into the original blocks. Others, shaped like water droplets, can be reassembled or stacked into new forms. Some suggest future products—spoons, vessels, or benches—designed from these geometries.

The Hydra blocks also show how engineered cuts can make wood flexible without breaking. Polansky’s amoeba-like holes could one day be used in architecture, joining shaped beams or materials that fit within them.

“It’s mathematical and speculative at once. That’s why I call it functional art,” Polansky says. “Wood has an organic presence. It’s fun to excavate that.”