While “high-tech” companies often live by the motto “move fast and break things,” we believe Art has the ability to move slow, illuminate system effects, generate thoughtful consideration, and provide a pathway towards greater connections between contemporary existence and natural ecosystems.
Tasked with creating a shade canopy for a central plaza, we chose to create an ode to the duality of technology and nature. Since both often utilize aspects of chaos, order, and precariousness, we present a dichotomy of an orderly structural base and frenetically folded canopy.
The design is meant to symbolize human evolution in a bottom-up progression. Human technology has mostly moved from simple to complex- and has thus far tended towards fast-moving disruption of natural patterns instead of discovering an identity of respectful and deliberate co-evolution with and within nature.
The canopy contains a set of “characters” dancing together in both order and chaos. There is an upward shift away from strict order towards combinations of binary and natural elements. Yet every so often there exist disruptive elements of out-of-place words distorting the patterns while comprising multiple connotations.
The pattern is unfinished, even at the top. The apexes may be seen as finite or infinite, depending on how we choose to see. Or depending on how we choose to believe. Or simply on how we choose to act.
What was the brief?
The development client (Culdesac) wanted a shade canopy at the main gathering space of a new development. This art-canopy resides at the central plaza for the site. The canopy should provide shade for people dining at tables in the plaza, while allowing food trucks to saddle up next to the canopy structure.
What were the solutions?
We worked to determine how to get the largest structure possible through studies of structural member sizes and their spanning capability. We then utilized dimensions that minimized waste, thereby maximizing the project budget's potential.
The shading portion is a crinkled concoction that is made of thin steel plates spanning more than 13-feet (3.95m) and a total span of 20-feet (6.1m) with only 3/16" (4.5mm) thickness. We calculated limitations for the steel sheets and maximized their formal potential. The entire canopy is raw 306 steel meant to rust, as this finish lasts virtually forever in the dry Arizona climate while also alluding to the area's mining and agricultural past. In addition, the lack of a coating, paint, or sealant allows the material to be more easily recycled or repurposed at the end of its life as a canopy.
We cut out thousands of "characters" from the thin steel plates to provide mysterious imagery. The spacing of the characters maintains the structural capacity of the plates. The entire development was designed around the aesthetics of a small Mediterranean village, with white buildings that included details of Mediterranean tiles and other details. The art-canopy's pattern is arranged in a typical tile-like pattern, with alternating dense and less-dense sections of the pattern. Each panel is unique and drawn "by hand" before creation of computer files.
The meaning of the patterns is mean to be a mystery at first viewing. Though anyone who pays attention to the content may start putting the themes together. We wanted the meaning to slowly unfold over time with the hope that people would never get bored of considering the patterns.
Team:
Artist: Matthew Salenger, coLAB studio
Parametric design: Pattern Design Studio
Structural engineering: Simply Structural
Photography: Winquist Photography
