This sculpture recalls the histories of textile industry and cargo shipping that once dominated the region, taking the form of steel spheres suspended from tall poles suggestive of the cargo masts that operated at the site. The reflective spheres capture the surrounding landscape and the viewer's own image within their surfaces.

A portrait of the heavens rendered on a catenary dome of fabric, this work depicts the sky above the antipode of Minneapolis. Suspended atop a seven-story glass tower, it functions as an urban-scaled mirror ball, reflecting light by way of more than 500,000 stars made of mirror-polished aluminum.

This site-specific playscape for all ages explores non-conventional uses of material through the technique of the pour. Tinted urethane foam, layered and cast in place, produces monumental structures with smooth, colorful interiors and textured exteriors, balancing control and spontaneity. Winner of the American Architecture Award in 2024

Six fused glass panels depicting olive tree bark line the Olive View Restorative Care Village, honoring the olive groves that shaped the region's agricultural history and the values of healing and reconciliation they represent. The imagery was generated by a digital algorithm designed specifically for the community and fabricated in collaboration with Judson Studios, the oldest family-run stained-glass maker in the United States.

Southern live oaks, icons of the American South, are depicted as they might appear lining an idyllic New Orleans street in this two-sided mural spanning a children's play space. Thousands of transparent acrylic squares function like pieces of stained glass, refracting sunlight and projecting color while drawing children in with a video game aesthetic.

Inspired by Utah's mesmerizing landscapes, this suspended work is based on an aerial image of the shore of the Great Salt Lake. The image is abstracted into a stack of horizontal bands, capturing the essence of the landscape in a layered, suspended form.

Hovering in a building entrance, this work's intricacy yields a visual complexity reminiscent of fluid dynamic systems. Its appearance shifts continuously with the viewer's movement, reading as a solid disk from below, a delicate form of liquid droplets from the exterior, and dissolving between geometry and wash depending on one's vantage point.

Inspired by landscape painting of the American Regionalists, this installation maps a composition of colors from an imaginary Kansas prairie onto over 20,000 segments of painted stainless-steel ball chain. The courthouse and its landscape extend through the negative space between the chains, becoming integral aspects of the work.

Depicting historic streetcars and contemporary trains and buses, this work celebrates the innovation of Los Angeles's transit systems past, present, and future. Comprising over thirty thousand translucent acrylic chips across 83 panels, its colors shift with changing sunlight and viewer perspective, evoking the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the city.

Thousands of segments of chain, precisely arranged in a single gesture cutting through the entry hall, form a monumental installation suggestive of a beam of brightly colored light. Its colors transform with changing lighting conditions and the movement of the viewer, while the negative space between the chains extends views to the ceiling above and the environment beyond.

Distributed across a series of light wells that increase in size as visitors move from parking to terminal, this work unfolds during the passage by foot and is inherently linked to one's journey. The hanging forms create a colonnade that crescendos or tapers depending on the traveler's direction, evoking the experience of moving along a palm-tree-lined boulevard.

Serving as both a functional bench and a commemoration of the life of a local surfer, this work employs manufacturing techniques and aesthetic characteristics unique to the sport of surfing.

Though clearly synthetic, this sculpture of fiberglass rods draws its structure and materiality from biological systems such as the growing tip of a plant, branching networks of capillaries, or the surface of a leaf. The work invites multiple interpretations depending on the viewer and their relationship to the natural world.

Developed collaboratively with university scientists, this installation represents the Phylogenetic Tree of Life, illustrating evolutionary relationships among all organisms across three domains: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucaryota. Comprising five and a half miles of chain in 96 variations, it reflects the iterative nature of scientific understanding and the interconnectedness of all living things.

A kind of urban-scaled graphic equalizer, this installation rigs geophones to the structure of an elevated train platform and outputs the signal to a large screen below the tracks. The system registers the approach and arrival of trains as well as the footsteps of commuters walking on the platform.

Installed in Pittsburgh Market Square, this piece is an abstracted representation of Amsterdam Island, the furthest inhabitable place on earth from Pittsburgh. Visitors are able to look into craters on the surface and view real images from Amsterdam Island.

Both an iconic sculpture and a delicate atmosphere, this work swirls through a building atrium by way of sophisticated algorithmic computation combined with proprietary fabrication processes. The extreme intricacy of the piece suggests breathtaking natural phenomena such as fluid dynamics or aurora borealis.

Created to float as an ambient atmosphere above views of the surrounding mountains, this work shifts between recognizable geometric forms and a fluid-like vapor depending on the viewer's vantage point. Integrating complex digital computation with traditional textile patterning techniques, it reshapes architectural space with a minimal use of material.

Based on the Japanese art of Kintsugi, this project reuses the cracked paved driveways in front of the Barracks buildings as part of the living history of Fort Barry, part of The Commons at Headlands Center of the Arts. The cracked pieces are documented, trimmed, and reunited with colored terrazzo, illuminating repair and decay as moments in the ongoing history of the site.

A meandering line of glass vitrines winds through the lobby of the school, filled with outmoded objects of students' choosing. The work functions as a wunderkabinett, encouraging students to explore questions related to history, progress, and the lifecycle of objects, technologies, languages, and customs.

Located within the garden of an urban hospital, this pavilion provides shade and seating while its intricate patterns of tubes and shadows are designed to captivate the visitor's imagination. Its most important function is creating a place that momentarily transports the mind away from illness, suitable for sitting alone or sharing a moment with another person.  

Produced through an unprecedented process of crushing stainless steel into building blocks, this sculpture reads as both irregular and highly refined. Viewed from the east it resembles an ad hoc stack; from the west, precise industrial cuts yield the strict geometric figure of an obelisk, evoking the geological formations of the surrounding landscape.

Employing a proprietary computational technique with a minimal use of material, this installation yields the effect of ghostly three-dimensional volumes hovering in the entryway.

Hanging in an atrium and made from over 10,000 unique segments of stainless steel ball chain, this color shaft changes throughout the day as viewers move up and down the elevators. It appears to twist, shifting in orientation and color, creating effects reminiscent of animation and natural phenomena.

Faraday Future, an innovative new car company in California, commissioned Ball-Nogues Studio to design the concept for a trade convention exhibit. The project was the backdrop the unveiling of their Zero1 prototype automobile at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January 2016. The exhibit needed to travel to other events and car shows around the world. Pinnacle Exhibits handled design development, fabrication and install.

These metal panel works blur the distinction between the fabricated and the organic, readable as surface, raw material, and permeable screen simultaneously. The crumpled metal manifests the massive forces used to compact it, while the clean saw cuts of the panel edges place the work in dialog with hard-edge abstract painting. Approximately 25" x 38" x 3" First displayed as part of the 'Constructions' Exhibition at Edward Cella Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, CA

Thousands of sweeping lengths of tinted stainless steel ball chain hang in catenary formations in a three-story atrium, taking cues from theatrical curtain designs. Its appearance shifts with the changing qualities of the skylit space and the movement of the viewer, suggesting brushstrokes on a translucent three-dimensional canvas that dissolve into washes and resolve back into clear strokes.

An architectural experiment in material composites using reclaimed paper, this installation served as a bold, colorful canopy and respite from the sun. A composition of blended paper, water, and pigment was sprayed onto lattices of natural rope, hardening into rigid, self-supporting structures that were diverted from the waste stream. Unlike fiberglass or carbon fiber composites that are polymer based, the Pavilion contained no toxic materials; it could be recycled or composted after the two-week run of the festival.

 

R&D Award, Architect Magazine (2015)

A tribute to the history of the region, where olive groves brought early immigrants, this piece serves as both a play apparatus and a resting area for park visitors. Curved cement pieces precast from a single mold nest together alongside olive sorting bins, a wheel, and a representative press, providing a backdrop for teaching and the annual festival.

This large customizable digital glass clock is programmed to display time and weather using a combination of colored and switchable glass. It can be set to read directly or mirrored in reverse as a projection on the ground, functioning reliably under the high winds, heavy traffic, and harsh weather conditions of the Colorado rail station.

Paying homage to the simpler days of baseball, taking cues from the mythic image of kids catching a glimpse of a ballgame through a knothole in a wooden fence, this work links the ballgame, a playground, and the street. It provides the security of a partition while facilitating coincidental encounters with the game from the sidewalk.

This installation exists as both object and atmosphere, its appearance shifting with the quality of light and the movement of the viewer. Amid the constant motion of the airport, it offers a moment of pause, a place for reflection and daydream.

Pulling the themes of water and fluidity into a two-story interior lobby, this installation resembles a thickened atmosphere of waves that is neither solid object nor emptiness but has qualities of both. Several thousand segments of custom-dyed stainless steel ball chain form an intricate system of overlapping catenary curves that morph in appearance with the viewer's vantage point.

Derived from a photograph that alludes to the spiritual dimension of water and its capacity to be both healing and foreboding, this work comprises over thirty thousand powder-coated pixels rendered as reflected light on brushed stainless steel fins. The quality of the reflections transforms with the changing seasons and the location of the viewer relative to the work.

A body of luminous radiation projecting from the corner of a building, the piece conjures images of the human aura in historical artwork or the effects of magnetic forces in scientific literature. As the viewer moves along the boulevards, the reflection of moving cars and changing lighting conditions transform the appearance of the artwork into effervescent light.

Taking cues from leather biker jackets customized with studs and spikes, this hovering surface of crumpled stainless steel is layered with a field of studs that imbue a unique geometry across its surface. The studs also serve a structural purpose, increasing the weight of the installation to nearly 4,000 pounds to resist uplift from wind loads.

Designed as a single large organism, this park links various interdependent areas through resource sharing and circulation systems including water collection and redistribution. Its design integrates creative learning opportunities into virtually every aspect of the park, educating visitors about natural ecological processes and sustainable practices.

Wall Text:

The boundaries between cultural disciplines are not easy to cross. A guy who studies sculpture and goes on to create furniture will probably never see his work in the MoMA design collection. An architect who refers to her installations as “art” will undoubtedly provoke derision from the ranks within the fine arts academy. In determining a title for this installation, one reason Radiant came to mind is because the figures illuminate the space within which they are situated. Body seemed appropriate because we explored the human figure; and Glob because we developed a process for producing the work in paper pulp – formless oatmeal-like goo commonly used to make protective packaging for consumer products. Each of the three figures in the Radiant Body Globs installation—Figure Head, Come to Mama, and Grandpa Lost his Cane—can be displayed as part of the installation or individually as a sculpture or lamp.

 

Created for the Exhibition Almost Anything Goes: Architecture and Inclusivity at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (2014)

Commissioned by the Nevada Museum of Art for an exhibition (Modernist Maverick) surveying the architecture of William L. Pereira, this work is an interpretation of the Transamerica building rendered in stainless steel ball chain.

1,141 catenary chains descend from a suspended elliptical ring beam and return skyward on a new path, forming two shells of pattern and color. Appearing as a translucent three-dimensional painting, the work visually connects several levels and amplifies the aesthetics of light, reflection, and color.

Developed for the Hammer Museum's annual K.A.M.P. (Kids' Art Museum Project), this workshop invited children to make sculptural masks from paper pulp. Standard sheets of paper were blended into a slurry, colored with pigment, and molded into face-like forms using a platen shaped like a head. The dried results were taken home by participants.

For the Music Legs Glob Lamp we adapted materials and processes commonly used in the mass production of packaging to yield a series of lamps. Each lamp is a unique sculptural object. Paper pulp forms an integrated structure and skin, such that the only non-biodegradable components are the bulb housing and cord. A variant of our earlier Glob Lamp 01, which resembles the iconic head of a famous cartoon mouse or an abstraction of male or female anatomy, this series has a wider range of potential shapes. As with the subjective interpretation of clouds, the viewer can read different meanings in the forms of each lamp. Because of the unique fabrication process, no single lamp can be exactly reproduced.

Seventeen thousand segments of painted stainless steel ball chain, totaling over ten miles, form a thickened atmosphere of ghostly waves within a double-height entryway. The work is neither solid nor emptiness but has qualities of both, shifting in appearance with the viewer's changing vantage point.

Cast from a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle and a late 1970s open-top speedboat, this installation transforms everyday objects into tools for fabrication and generators of architectural space. Multiple casts in recycled paper pulp were united into a structural whole, with the negative spaces left by the artifacts forming an occupiable mock tanning booth. The work challenges the contemporary architectural vogue for software-generated form by finding structure and meaning in the suburban landscape instead.

The Pavillon Spéciale is an installation designed and built by students of the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture under the direction of Ball-Nogues Studio. The installation can be arched and curled at full scale to form different types of space befitting the university’s summer program. The installation creates a sense of place while providing a respite from the sun and rain.

Comprising roughly 900 stainless steel spheres, this sculpture forms an abstracted mountain drawn from geological engineering concepts. Its shape echoes the surrounding Edmonton landscape, while its mirror surfaces reflect passing cars, weather, and light, drawing drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians into contemplative interaction.

Located in the barren desert, this synthetic earthwork doubled as a recreational amenity, its form standing 30 feet from rim to low point and depressed ten feet into the earth. Its rough plywood structure, originally formwork for another project, Talus Dome, resembles a basin. Rock climbing holds on the interior allow visitors to descend into a deep pool of salt water, evoking abandoned suburban pools and ramshackle homestead dwellings scattered across the Mojave.

A cascading diaphanous curtain of refractive beads attached to the inside of a glass tower wall, this work produces the effect of cathedral windows by transforming sunlight into light patterns that strike the sidewalk and building. At night it emits a gentle glowing presence, while the space between the chains permits views into the stairwell and to the sky beyond.

Comprised of hundreds of colored translucent plastic hand shapes linking together into chains, this installation continuously transforms the color of sunlight entering the Teen Center. Located directly behind storefront glass, it provides privacy from the street while producing the impression of human gestures through sequences of subtly varied hand forms.

Comprised of more than 300 suspended chains, each link cast in the form of a hand, this installation bathes the lobby of a senior center in reflected colored light. The shape of each hand is derived from video footage and, arrayed in sequences, the hands produce the impression of human gestures.

An aggregation of mirror-polished stainless steel spheres, this sculpture operates structurally like an enormous Newton's Cradle toy. Each ball is suspended by cable and locked into position by gravity and its neighbors, reflecting a distorted image of passersby on the exterior wall of a parking structure.

Hundreds of individual low coffee tables and three-legged stools link together to form a fabric-like surface hanging from the wall of a campus courtyard. After the run of the installation, the components were dismantled to become immediately available commodities, tables and stools returned to everyday use.

Comprising brightly colored letters formed from recycled paper pulp, this installation takes the shape of a monumental arch scaled to the size of a child. From one side it reads as a wall; from the other, a heap or pile suggesting the most rudimentary form of monument. The letters function simultaneously as building blocks and teaching tools, each infused with wildflower seeds so that when the installation was dismantled, students could plant them to create their own gardens.

Constructed solely of sprayed paper pulp, this lamp series takes a minimal approach to materiality, with the pulp forming an integrated structure and skin. The bulbous silhouette invites multiple readings, suggesting the iconic shape of a Mickey Mouse balloon or, conversely, human anatomy. The fabrication process developed for the Glob Lamp initiated a new line of material research that extended into architectural-scale installations.

Commissioned for the Guggenheim Museum's 50th anniversary exhibition, this proposal imagines Frank Lloyd Wright's rotunda repurposed as an industrial assembly line for transforming raw sugar cane into candy. Recognizing the building's sequence of interconnected ramps and galleries as an ideal manufacturing circuit, the design reframes the museum's cultural production as a literal one, with visitors moving through the space as both audience and witness to the process.

An array of vibrantly colored hanging strings spans the Indianapolis Museum of Art lobby, generating the appearance of a softly spiraling surface that twists and contorts through the atrium. Depending on the viewer's vantage point, the work blurs into billows of color or snaps into a focused geometry.

Comprising 10,000 items of clothing manufactured by American Apparel, this architecturally scaled hanging structure uses each garment as both building component and individual article of clothing. Over the course of the Biennale, the installation was dismantled and the clothing dispersed to visitors.

Approximately two thousand individual lengths of bead chain hang under self-weight to form a matrix of catenary curves spanning the ceiling of a permit office. The chains, totaling approximately two miles, span between custom perforated aluminum panels fitted within the existing acoustical ceiling grid, forming a diaphanous metallic vapor rather than a discrete solid object.

Integrating complex digital computation, mechanization, and printing with traditional handcraft, this installation alters space with fluid architectural forms using a minimal amount of material. A proprietary technique yields the effect of three-dimensional spatial constructs printed to resemble objects hovering in space.

Drawings created with the same data used to to make the Feathered Edge installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The drawings were exhibited in the same space as the installation.Drawings created with the same data used to to make the Feathered Edge installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The drawings were exhibited in the same space as the installation.

Designed and fabricated by the studio over eight months, the Instal-lator 1 with the Variable Information Atomizing Module is a custom computer-controlled machine that automates the measuring, cutting, and airbrushing of string in a single continuous process. Built as the technological backbone of the Feathered Edge installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, it enabled a level of intricacy in form and color that would have been impossible by hand, precisely cutting 3,604 unique lengths of string while airbrushing each in discrete locations to yield holographic-like images floating in space. The machine reflects a core question in the studio's practice: what becomes possible when you design your own tools.

Comprised only of strings and ink, this installation constructs the lightest wall imaginable, an ephemeral architecture that mirrors the modular units of stone at the Entrepot. A complex system of overlapping catenary curves was cut and printed by a custom computer-controlled machine designed and fabricated for the project.

This was the sixth in a series of projects referred to as “Suspensions.” Functioning as an astigmatic lens, this suspended installation absorbs light and creates a new point of focus in the room. Made of almost no material, it envelops rather than obstructs viewers, encouraging social interaction while producing the effect of ghostly three-dimensional objects hovering in space.

Created by students from SCI-Arc under the direction of Ball-Nogues Studio, this large-scale installation could be twisted, arched, and curled to form different types of space. In the desert heat it provided shade and mist, while at night the fluorescent tubes supported in each cell created the effect of a sweeping motion.

This undulating functional object is crafted from assembled layers of industrially cut cardboard and plywood, its form generated through the repetition and pattern of two pre-cut shapes designed on computational software. Suggesting movement and vitality, it acts as a fluid intermediary between the public space of the gallery and its workspace.

A low-resolution aerial image of San Diego is translated into a sculptural bas-relief map, the result approaching abstraction. Fabricated using a CNC router and finished to resemble brass, the work marks the location of the hotel within the broader urban fabric of the city.

Three thousand hanging strings totaling ten miles span the walls of a gallery in precise arrangements, suggesting a surface or volume from a distance. Upon moving into its center, the three-dimensional array of catenaries evokes a rolling fog, gradating from rich orange to sky blue.

An explosion of string catenaries suspended from above transforms a difficult transition space into a playful experience, forming an ephemeral ceiling that subtly guides visitors through several paths without ever actually defining one.

Floating over the Coachella festival grounds, this outdoor installation filtered sunlight and provided shelter from the desert heat. Actively engaging the breeze, it translated wind energy into sensuous, hypnotic motion while creating a shimmering visual spectacle by day and night.

Commissioned as a centerfold for the January 2008 issue of Form Magazine, this spread features Liquid Sky, the studio's winning entry for the 2007 MoMA Young Architects Program. Collaging installation photography over an Alberto Vargas pin-up and a do-it-yourself guide to building a model of the Mylar roof structure, it was distributed to all members of the Los Angeles American Institute of Architects.

Translucent tinted Mylar petals that resembled blossoming flowers of stained glass form a tensioned surface that reconfigures the horizon and immerses visitors in kaleidoscopic pattern of color created by filtered sunlight. Six structural towers support the canopy while providing discrete spaces at their base for relaxing and social interaction on community hammocks.

Designed for the window of Agnes b.'s SoHo store, this installation adapted the scissoring net structure of the studio's P.S.1 Young Architects Program project into a vertical configuration, forming a large-scale chain-link fence between the street and the store interior. The 390 unique Mylar parts were cut by a computer-controlled system that simultaneously labeled each piece with the Agnes b. logo. A rotating series of posters by designers from around the world appeared weekly in collage, each new addition complementing or obscuring the last.

A canopy installation and event environment made from repurposed t-shirts woven into sports netting, this work formed a gateway through which museum patrons could walk. Garment-related fabrication techniques including patterning, sewing, folding, weaving, and draping were employed to create an ephemeral swirling kaleidoscopic structure.

Created during a workshop with students at the Kunstuniversität Linz, this tensile installation occupies a staircase in a building erected by the Third Reich during World War II. Sports netting and bulk quantities of recycled clothing and sheets form a delicately balanced network overhead, anchored by an enormous egg-shaped wad of clothing that diverts foot traffic on the stairs. Students passing through could walk around it or push it aside like a large punching bag, the egg functioning simultaneously as counterweight and obstacle.

Transforming the gallery into a traversable rolling landscape, this installation extends the casual social terrain of the campus into the gallery space. Visitors are invited to climb, slide, study, or linger within the undulating cardboard terrain, blurring the line between artwork and recreational environment.

A half-block-long wall structure curves like the human body and is constructed from 4,000 layers of corrugated cardboard. Peep-show display windows, inspired by Marcel Duchamp's Etant Donnes, punctuate the wall with tightly framed compositions of live models wearing Frank Gehry's jewelry line.

Hovering over a courtyard in the form of a vortex, this outdoor installation is constructed in tinted Mylar resembling stained glass and provides shade while creating a beckoning outdoor room for social interaction and contemplation. During the day, the canopy casts colored fractal light patterns onto the ground while an integrated ambient sound installation rumbles softly underfoot.

Ball-Nogues won this commission, but project funding was lost. The client requested that we design a “teepee” structure that could serve as a permanent wildlife observation pavilion, a summer party space and contemplative retreat. Advancing techniques we developed for our projects Maximilian’s Schell and Liquid Sky; the assembly is a tensile matrix of interconnected stainless steel tiles stretched over a wooden tripod and a stone seating area. Each tile will be unique, and together form a structure similar to a membrane. Apertures in the surface will let sunlight pass through while allowing seated inhabitants to view the landscape and trees outside. A fire pit will be at the center of the structure. Designers and Principals in Charge: Benjamin Ball, Gaston Nogues Project Team: Andrew Lyon, Ayodh Kamath Structural Engineer: Will Laufs of Thornton Thomasetti, New York Landscape Design: Terrain, New York

Ball-Nogues Studio was runner up in this invited competition to design a monumental gateway to the City of Houston at the Bush Interconentinental Airport in 2008. Dennis Oppenheim won the competition while third place went to Jaume Plensa. Our Competition Narrative: Leaving Bush Intercontinental Airport by car along John F. Kennedy Boulevard, one notices an unusual sight on Houston's expansive horizon: three brightly colored rolling hills. A few seconds pass and we can see that our path, like a highway in a pastoral landscape, cuts through these hills. A few more seconds pass and we see that the hills are rising from a field of what appears to be road signs. These ubiquitous pieces of infrastructure have no text on them. They line the street like trees on a grand European Boulevard. A few more seconds pass and they are bending and flowing like prairie grasses swept by enormous gusts of wind. The color of the bright carmine signs is now changing; they are no longer signs; they are growing in size and becoming something less familiar. We are entering the passage between the hills, but we are not between hills made of earth, the “hills” are actually comprised of what appear to be hundreds of giant flowers soaring overhead blossoming in a violet and blue crescendo. In fact, the hills that seconds ago appeared solid are actually supported by a forest of columns; we can see the underside of their top surface. As Dorothy declares upon her magical arrival in The Land of Oz, “we are not in Kansas anymore.” In less than a minute, we the travelers have crossed a threshold between the global network of airports with its crowds, colorless infrastructure, and long waits to a place of boundless possibility. Bloom is an ambassador welcoming you to the colorful and exuberant City of Houston with a gift of flowers. Bloom is a monumental gateway and time based experience at the Houston Intercontinental Airport near the location of the existing Welcome to Houston sign. The site is within a “pause” in the progression of way finding signage that one experiences coming in and out of the airport.  The work will have tremendous impact in this location. It greets us when we arrive and bids us a warm farewell as we depart. Using the speed of the automobile and the dimension of time Bloom creates an animated space reminiscent of an lush field of flowers rising from the ground and blossoming before our eyes. Each moment is slightly different than the previous to create the effect of transformation from common road signs into an efflorescent field of flowers – perhaps bluebonnets, the Texas state flower. Bloom is similar to its Victorian predecessor, the Zoetrope, but it is decidedly of the 21st Century. Land art meets cinema: the “hillside” is arrayed with hundreds of “movie cells.” Permanently printed onto highway sign materials and supported by CNC shaped tubing, each of the hundreds of “signs” and “sign posts” is slightly different. Cinematic phenomenon also animates the posts. Sometimes their arrangement will create the effect of riding in a car while looking between rows of an agricultural field , at other moments they pitch and sway as if being swept by winds. The project is “scalable” - the quantity of posts can be reduced or increased according to logistics and budgetary parameters while their location can be easily adjusted during the development process to accommodate the needs of multiple stakeholders. The project can be built in Houston to save costs. We intend to use proven construction materials and methods from the transit infrastructure industry such as galvanized steel tubing, road sign fabrication techniques, grade beams for anchorage, and a rock bed surround to eliminate mowing around the work. Ball-Nogues can consult with transit specialists IBI, a group with whom we've collaborated before, to optimize the various engineering options. Bloom can be a gateway that will become a symbol of Houston's warmth and welcoming culture while being a spectacle that can attract global attention by fusing metaphors of the Texas prairie with the universal imagery of road signs. Bloom defies expectations of arrival and departure to transform our surroundings from the commonplace to the fantastical. Each time we pass through the exuberant world of Bloom it reminds us of Houston's receptivity and innovative spirit and that all travelers are part of a global community. Principals in Charge: Benjamin Ball, Gaston Nogues Project Team: James Okamura Andrew Lyon, Ben Dean, David Bantz, Animation: James Okamura, Sparce Studio Custom Software Development: Sparce Studio

In 2008 clothier Issey Miyake approached Ball-Nogues Studio to redesign their store on Madison Avenue in New York. Given a limited budget, the ceiling was of primary interest to the client. Aiming to create a design that grew from a method of production, we conceived a ceiling made of thousands of individual hanging metallic ball chains organized into interweaving “flows.” The ceiling was to have a sculptural presence overhead: at times, the flows drooped downward to become obstacles for shoppers, while at other times, they formed an atmospheric haze. Suspended between the hanging chains was a flexible clothing display system that floated throughout the store. The ceiling was to establish a new identity for the store from the street while drawing shoppers into the boutique to explore. Our design concept, rooted in consideration of the parameters of material and fabrication paralleled Miyake’s interest in clothing designs evolving from their processes of production. Principals in Charge: Benjamin Ball, Gaston NoguesProject Team: Andrew Lyon, Will Trossell, Ben Dean, Mark Bowman, Mike Ferrante Custom Software Development: Sparce Studio

How do we take a child’s thoughts away from illness? How to create a work that gives a sense that everything is in its place? How can sculpture engage the theme of children’s literature? How do we make a work that captivates the imagination of a child through narrative and color while engaging adults though intricacy that approaches that of the natural world? Designed for the new John’s Hopkins children’s hospital, this suspended sculpture addressed the theme of children’s literature through the concept of a “storytelling cloud”. A combination of sculpture and cutout animation, the cloud is comprised of a friendly swarm of silhouette illustrations. When viewed across space and time, the cutout illustrations tell a story of three friends riding on the back of a bird on a journey through the four seasons from departure to a safe return home. Linked end to end, the silhouettes form catenary chains that are suspended from the ceiling. Principals in Charge: Benjamin Ball, Gaston Nogues Project Team: Andrew Lyon, Will Trossell, Ben Dean, Mark Bowman, Jodi Bass, David Bantz, Chris Lin Cutout Illustrations: Hsinping Pan Custom Software Development: Sparce Studio

The client asked us to imagine an installation that evolved over a three week period culminating in a gala event where the new Lexus LS would be revealed to a group of invited guests. The setting was to be a public plaza with heavy foot traffic. We saw this as a challenge to make something that gradually changed from sculpture to party setting while also communicating aspects of the Lexus brand such as luxury, innovation, refinement and leadership in design. We envisioned a temporal installation built of bricks. The bricks were to be sensually curving fiberglass ottomans similar in scale to a woman's body and formally reminiscent of a Henry Moore sculpture. The 30 ottoman / bricks would stack to form a single lexus shaped sculpture, approximately 16 feet high and evocative of the hand on a sundial - a reminder of the passage of time. As the three week period progressed, the sculpture would decompose with ottomans individually repositioned to form a perimeter ring - like hour marks on a sundial, while pointing toward the center where the car would be unveiled on the final day. Project Team: Benjamin Ball,Gaston Nogues, Oliver Hess