"Abundance" Project

Project

Granite Park Five, 2015

Plano, TX United States

Artwork Budget: $389,000

Overview

1,200 pieces of handcrafted glass are grouped together in a wave-like crescent formation. This pattern is 74 feet long by 49 feet wide and suspended 4.5 feet down from the ceiling in the lobby of a Granite Park high rise in Plano Texas.
 
The Abundance installation was designed to hang in staggered layers creating the appearance of a unified structure. Each handcrafted piece of glass making this pattern is suspended independently from a custom length of airline cable. This cable virtually disappears against the white ceiling allowing a viewer to focus on the beauty of the glass and not the engineering that went into installing it.

Goals

The goal of Abundance was to stimulate the space it was installed into with a combination of color, light and the sparkling refraction. Our design had to communicate a feeling of prosperity while also being visually light, translucent and engaging. We wanted to create a piece that conveyed a unified structural design from a distance while revealing intricate and beautiful detail as the viewer investigated more closely. 

Process

To establish the visual representation of abundance and energy, we utilized a design that created the illusion of bountiful waves of silvery fish darting across the ceiling. Three different glass patterns were used; the nearly transparent diamond plate texture, a semi-translucent primavera pattern and finally an opaque opaline pattern. Each type of glass had different properties of reflection and translucence, creating engaging effects as light passed through them. The shape of each length of glass was largely uniform with variety and detail imbued through the arrangement of the 3 glass patterns. 

Additional Info

One challenge to this project was the possible exposure of the glass to winds as strong as 50 mph. Upon building our mockup, we assembled an array of powerful fans and simulated a 50mph wind on the piece insure there was no glass to glass contact under such strenuous conditions.

Project Team

ARCHITECT

Boka Powell

ARTIST

Tim de Jong
Wimberley Glassworks, Inc

CLIENT

David R. Cunningham
Granite Properties, Inc