Situ Studio installs reOrder in the Great Hall

The space has been a hive of activity, truckloads of equipment and pre fabricated wooden and steel parts made their way into the building each labeled and numbered and sorted; as the stacks grew I quickly realized that the substructure of these forms contained a serious bit of engineering. Teams quickly began fitting the columns with collars and hoops of varying sizes skewed in a variety of positions with a complex system of chords. These underlying structures are quite beautiful within themselves and although they will obscured from view upon completion, visitors will be able to experience the project in its early stages through detailed film documentation which will be presented within the space upon its opening to the public.

Situ Studio installs reOrder in the Great Hall

While the teams working at dizzying heights begin assembling and installing the “bones” they are being swiftly followed by workers installing interior lighting and preparing fabric which has begun to be stretched and painstakingly folded over the massive structures. Despite the project’s complexity, it has began to rise with a certain grace and beauty not often seen in a hardhat area.

Situ Studio, Brooklyn. Rendering of reOrder

Situ Studio is a Brooklyn based architectural and fabrication firm whose reOrder project will open to the public March 4^th 2011, in the Brooklyn Museum’s Grand Hall.

Situ Studio (2005–present), Brooklyn. Rendering of reOrder, an installation to open in the Great Hall of the Brooklyn Museum in 2011

It has been my pleasure to be able to watch this process develop from its very early stages to its current project milestone: the first full scale mock up of one of Situ Studios column distorting creations.

Situ Studio. Full scale column mock up with fabric form at top and table or seating area options at the base.

I was invited to visit a construction site in mid-town Manhattan where a donated space housed the gigantic model that the Situ Studio team had been on working for weeks. I might add that my feet went numb almost immediately in the raw unheated space where this team has spent many consecutive hours constructing the mock up. Upon encountering the model, what struck me immediately was the shift in scale from previous prototypes. Because of this change, the form went from being merely viewed to being experienced.  In addition to the main fabric form, each column ends at its base in either a bench or standing table that are being fabricated from a solid surface material shaped by a cutting edge heat forming technique. These areas of respite will provide a dramatic vantage point to experience the reORDER installation.

What was an exciting project on paper is beginning to take shape; I can only imagine that when these forms transform the 16 giant columns of the Great Hall it will be truly spectacular.

The exhibition is being held in an intimate gallery space to allow the viewer to be immersed in the images of the “changing faces of Brooklyn.” Because of the gallery’s space constraints it was determined that of the 389 images submitted, the top-ranked 20% of images would be printed for display. Of this 20% (or roughly 78 photographs) a distinction was required to reflect the crowds selection process; for this reason some photographs were printed as large as 20” x 30” and some as small as 5” x 7”, depending upon the crowd’s rankings.

Rough layout of one of the gallery walls. Full layout: click_full.jpg.

When these images of varying size are displayed in a random arrangement it serves to illustrate the crowds’ selection process not as linear, but rather a diverse response with certain ideas or, in this case, photographs rising to the front of a collective conscious in much the way a tag cloud uses text to visually illustrate how within many voices certain responses carry varying degrees of impact.

Cloud tag from Flickr.com

The exhibition promises to be interesting on many levels, and I hope all that participated both in submitting photographs and those involved in the selection process can make it to see the results.

A major factor influencing Brushed with Light‘s design was due to the delicate nature of watercolors themselves. Because the works are light sensitive it is required that they be exhibited in low light. This being said, a dim room is not always the most comfortable environment to view works of art.

As a solution, I designed the inner walls of the room to be recessed at the top so I could install lighting fixtures, which were then colored with gels and diffused to give the room an inviting glow, without subjecting the paintings to additional light. I repeated this technique in the gallery entrance so the visitor is reminded before even entering the space the important role light plays within these beautiful paintings. In addition the walls were painted with a deep berry palette which functions to make the paintings “pop”, due to the fact that light is reflected off the pictures while being absorbed by the wall around them, highlighting the pictures rather than the room.