Transamerica

The Nevada Museum of Art commissioned Ball-Nogues to create an interpretation of the Transamerica building for the exhibition Modernist Maverick: The Architecture of William L. Pereira

July 27, 2013 – October 13, 2013

This exhibition surveys the architecture, urban planning, and design work of American architect William L. Pereira through images, models, drawings, and plans. The exhibition re-examines the modest spaces he created early in his career and the large-scale structures for which he is largely remembered.

The structures Pereira designed were far-flung and often large in scale, ranging from San Francisco’s iconic Transamerica Tower to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the University of California, San Diego Geisel Library to the master plan for California’s Irvine Ranch and the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX); Marineland of the Pacific to Cape Canaveral; a master plan for Doha—the capital city of Qatar—to the National Medical Center of Iran. Pereira became the first architect for the University of California system and master planned and designed many of the buildings for the University of California, Irvine.

The purpose of the project is to frame Pereira’s practice within the histories of architectural modernism and southern California in the mid-twentieth century. Because Pereira’s career parallels the arc of modern architecture and its focus on iconic form, the evolution and trajectory of his work sheds light on the closing window of the modern movement.

Project statistics:

17,000’ of ball chain which is equivalent to about 3.25 miles