Leif Maginnis

Gingerbread House - This project was called Winter Wonderland and was built for The Grove shopping center in Los Angeles. I was responsible for engineering the weatherproof animatronic characters on the roof. The teddy bear waves his hand, the cherry on the ice cream cone spins around and the snowman turns his head back and forth. I also fabricated the Santa Claus clock and carved many different details on the house out of foam.

DNA exhibit - This was part of a larger Genomics exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I was one of the fabricators on this project. The DNA structure was made by creating a temporary CNC-cut plywood skeleton that created paths for the DNA spiral and it's nucleotides. After the complex shape of the DNA spiral was determined and pieced together, the plywood skeleton underneath was cut out in pieces to reveal a double-helix DNA model.

Monster House - The oversized motocross helmet and the vidoegame station I fabricated for the Discovery Channel program Monster House. "Motocross" was the theme of the show. The images on the top are of a motorcycle helmet that I sculpted out of a solid block of polystyrene foam. The visor was made from flexible plywood. The completed helmet was four feet high. In the pictures below, I carved a road with hills under a mountain. The top half of the mountain I shaped from wire mesh which I topped with plaster fabric. The surface of the carved foam was designed to appear like a motorcycle trail. The mountain hills and road were later painted and decorated with miniature trees and rocks. This X-box video game station has four LCD monitors that I mounted inside the mountain. Under the acrylic and glass table were sliding drawers that held the X-box video games and their controllers.

Curvy chair - This bent plywood chair was designed to be an oversized chair or be a table if it's turned on it's side and a tabletop is added.

Conversation chair - I designed and built this bent plywood chair for two people to sit and talk. The seats are slightly angled toward eachother so that the people sitting in the chair naturally feel compelled to engage the person next to them. It is made out of Italian Poplar bending plywood. The six legs are made from bent stainless steel rod.

Bent plywood chair - I designed and fabricated this bent plywood lounge chair.