Industrial Design · rfalconvargas
Parasaurian — Bio-Inspired Wind Instrument
Parasaurian is a brass-family wind instrument whose tubing geometry is reverse-engineered from the hollow cranial crest of the dinosaur Parasaurolophus — “a sound 75 million years in the making.” Built largely from painted PVC and tube, it routes air through crest-derived resonant passages, and is documented through paleontological study, concept sketches, ergonomic mock-ups, painted prototypes, and final renders.
Discipline
Industrial Design
Medium
Instrument · Spatial study
Gallery
Selected frames
Reflection
Reflection
Parasaurian started from a question I couldn’t shake: what did a Parasaurolophus actually sound like, and could I build an instrument that lets a person play that voice? Translating a fossil crest’s internal chambers into real resonant tubing meant treating paleontology as an acoustics brief. The PVC prototyping was deliberately humble — I wanted the form to earn its sound through geometry, not expensive materials. It is the project where biology, spatial design, and music collapsed into one object for me.
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