Reclaimed
Beauty

The Concept

Reclaimed Surfaces is a generative art system and site-responsive installation practice built on a single rule: the dimensions of a found surface determine its own aesthetic decomposition.

The project operates across two material states. The first consists of discarded portable surfaces such as wooden panels, construction leftovers, and urban waste materials. The second consists of architectural surfaces: abandoned walls, empty buildings, industrial interiors, and neglected urban structures.

Both categories are treated equally as computational inputs. Each surface carries measurable geometry that can be read, decomposed, and re-expressed through Euclid’s algorithm.

The result is an artwork authored by mathematics and material, not by taste.

The Algorithm

Euclid's algorithm finds the Greatest Common Divisor of two integers by repeatedly replacing the larger with the remainder of division — until the remainder is zero.

It is essential in modern encryption systems, especially: RSA cryptography.

Applied to a rectangle with dimensions L and W, it generates a recursive tiling: the surface is filled with as many squares of side min(L, W) as fit, and the leftover strip is processed the same way. Every square produced is a direct consequence of the surface's own proportions.

Recursive GCD tiling — squares emerge from the surface's own proportions

The Coloring Rule

Each square in the tiling is painted according to its role in the decomposition — not its position in a sequence, not the artist's hand. The color is determined by the number of square tiles generated through its decomposition using the Euclidean algorithm. The total number of tiles is divided by seven, and the remainder (Tiles mod 7) selects one of seven predefined RAL colors from the palette.

The Material

The project uses reclaimed surfaces. These include discarded wooden panels and the walls of abandoned buildings.

Abandoned architectural surfaces are treated as active material. Their cracks, repairs, stains, and structural marks remain visible and become part of the computational reading of the space.

The algorithm can be applied directly onto walls or used to generate modular panels that are installed onto architectural surfaces. Both methods coexist within the same system.

Each site becomes a unique configuration of geometry and memory. No two surfaces generate the same structure.