an imaginary landscape in the sky
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Hovering over the Boston Greenway in airspace previously occupied by the elevated highway, this sculpture spans 600 feet suspended from buildings. It’s form, changing with wind and light, recalls the layered past of the site and its city. Delicate yet monumental, it interrupts the hustle and bustle of downtown with a sense of calm contemplation and intangible transience. The sculpture’s soft motion of woven fiber netting recalls the ocean that once extended to the site. Three holes reference the voids of Boston’s “trimountain” used to fill in land for the growing industrial city. Colored patterning is a reminder of the lanes of
traffic that severed a city from its waterfront to accommodate the automobile. The sculpture weaves into buildings, physically reconnecting the city, utilizing the latent lateral capacity of skyscrapers. Mirroring the intent of the Greenway below, it contrasts the hard urban edges and reclaims airspace for the public. It is simultaneously a commentary on the history of cities and a celebration of current transformation. Its interconnected fiber networks are a physical manifestation of how the layers of time and human action are inextricably linked like ripples in water.
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Map of Boston’s original boundaries and the “Trimountain”
The elevated highway that once occupied this site 94
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early plan with two forms
knitting the city back together
conceptual models 96
watercolor sketch
early iterations mimicking highway lanes
highway lanes go crazy
Our design process includes digital modeling, sketching, and physical modeling. Often my three coworkers and I will each create a design in the morning, then switch models in the afternoon. The process is intimately collaborative and iterative.
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Each iteration responds to our own aesthetics, which buildings allow attachment points, constraints from our engineer, client input, color inspirations, and cost restrictions. Sometimes I’ll have an idea in a dream, or while riding my bike to work. I will then try to recreate that idea in our software as something constructible. At first, we iterate wildly, drawing anything that comes to mind. Simultaneously we research the site, and look for inspiration around us. Next we select a few directions, and finally we concentrate on bringing one design to fruition.
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We have worked with Autodesk to create a custom software that models soft bodied forms. The program allows us the model our sculptures under gravity and wind. Renders such as this allow us to see realistic density of the netting. We are currently working on installations in 5 different cities, some netted sculptures and others out of materials such as mist.
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Our engineers at ARUP work with us to create construction documents. Details like these allow the manufacturer to create our sculptures so that they withstand hurricane winds and other environmental stresses.
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attachment to building
interlocking eye splice
4-way node
sculpture net attachment to structural ropes
netting
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At night our sculptures change color slowly, becoming floating orbs of light. LED fixtures allow us to program sequences of color projection. Using specific colors can cause certain parts of the sculpture to become very bright while others fade away.
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In a collaboration with the Google Arts Team, we designed a sculpture for the 2014 TEDtalks conference on which the public could draw with light. Using mobile devices, viewers could literally paint the skies with the motion of their hands.
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take aways: • • • • • • •
designing at the urban scale experience writing a TEDtalk, and at a conference soft body modeling and animation explorations in composition and movement intensive iteration is exhausting but helpful for form finding collaborating with a close-knit group of designers is extremely fulfilling an appreciation for the geometry of netted forms and diamond patterns
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