FLUENT TRACES, 2006
Fluent Traces is a large-scale permanent commissioned sculpture made of three powder-coated steel structures covered in greenhouse shadecloth and suspended by stainless steel aircraft cable.
At times for me these structures operate like scale models for imaginary buildings, hovering, floating or drifting in a vast space. At other times I read the multi-level semi transparent forms as sections of the existing architecture – both the solid wall on one side and the windows on the other form grids. I image that for a moment fragments of the existing architecture have been shaved off or broken free to torque and drift. The undulating forms are built on a grid with levels that are parallel to the floor. As with most of my work, here my aim is to articulate a form that appears to have been built with a precise blueprint, while at the same time to contradict this with some demonstration of the structure as dynamic system.
When I visited the site I was interested in the possibilities of working in a space that not only offered a twelve story open atrium space, but one with seemingly infinite vantage points. The site includes three bridges that connect the firm’s offices that are housed in adjacent buildings and the three structures were sited to these open crossings that span the chasm like space. Conference rooms and offices at all levels face the atrium and in some one of the structures almost fills the visual field a window.
In the title the word fluent come from a notion of fluid. This could be a form of undulating wave-like movement, or in an even more specific reference to the international focus of the firm, fluency in a foreign language, which to me implies a kind of fluidity across translation. Traces are like visual images seen from the corner of the eye - transparent, weightless, like a mirage. Or like the traced drawings on drafting mylar where the multiple stages of the building design are simultaneously visible, the process revealed.
Fluent Traces, 2006
In collaboration with Siemon Allen
Commissioned by WilmerHale
1825 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC
Rigging by Methods and Materials
steel, shadecloth
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