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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