ARMOR OF EMPEROR FERDINAND I — 1549 / 2326 For this project, I started from a real historical piece: the Armor of Emperor Ferdinand I, created in 1549 by Nuremberg armorer Kunz Lochner and currently part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection. I reimagined the armor 777 years later, in the year 2326. A future civilization discovers the armor buried beneath the ruins of a vanished city. But inside there is no body. There is a seed. Over centuries, the armor has stopped protecting an emperor and has become a vessel protecting one of humanity’s last possibilities for life. The goal was not to turn a historical armor into a futuristic version, but to completely transform its purpose while preserving the identity and recognizable characteristics of the original piece. From power to survival. From the past, a possibility of the future.

The Impossible Prediction 🌌

For the Flora Museum Challenge, I reimagined the Met Museum’s Automaton Clock in the Form of Urania, Muse of Astronomy by Paullus Schiller (ca. 1620–30) as the center of a fictional scientific mystery.

The story begins in a 17th-century workshop, where Schiller is building Urania, a mechanical representation of the heavens. Once completed, the automaton comes alive: its gears turn, the celestial sphere rotates, and Urania moves as she tracks the heavens.

But something unexpected happens. One of the gears begins moving differently from the others. Schiller initially believes it is simply a mechanical flaw, but the unusual movement continues with strange precision.

The story then jumps forward 400 years. Modern researchers rediscover Urania and analyze the mysterious gear using contemporary astronomical data. What first appears to be an error turns out to correspond to a precise location in the night sky — something that could not have been known in Schiller’s time.

The researchers are left with an impossible question: How could a 17th-century machine contain an astronomical prediction about something discovered centuries later?

Using Flora, I developed this idea into a five-part visual narrative — The Creation, The Awakening, The Anomaly, 400 Years Later, and The Revelation — and turned it into a short cinematic demo.

The project explores how a real historical object can inspire an entirely new fictional world while preserving the character, craftsmanship, and astronomical identity of the original artifact.

Turning Urania into the center of a scientific mystery is such a strong narrative leap. The automaton clock already feels uncanny, and this concept pushes that quality beautifully.