Designed for Woods Bagot NYC
Following the completion of Woods Bagot New York’s 2011 office expansion, the studio set out to create an installation for the new lobby that would reflect the culture and qualities of the studio. The piece, simply called spring, embodies two qualities of the studio: a commitment to the exploration and application of contemporary digital processes, and social and collaborative studio culture. The concept was to create an event in which the studio could author and produce the installation as a group, making the piece something that belonged to the entire studio. As a DIY project, the Nic Nac system was used as a framework which allowed fabrication to remain in-house. The project incorporates the Woods Bagot logo as a signature super graphics defining the entrance to the New York office.
Designs for the graphic were run through a simple image reader in grasshopper which translates images into a two-toned pixel grid of Nic Nac paper pieces. While the first graphic was supplied as a beta test, subsequent seasonal banners will be developed by the studio and posted on an online voting site from which the next graphic would be selected. This use of seasonal banners would allow for multiple authors concepts to be expressed and through subsequent generations develop a deeper understanding of the paper pixel medium through the exploration of new effects and configurations. Fabrication of the pieces used an in house Craft Robo CNC paper cutter and simple 9×12 sheets of bristle paper, keeping costs low and enabling large scale production.
The Assembly of the piece was as important to the concept as the object itself. As a collaborative studio effort, the concept created a social event, termed “The Knitting Circle”. On a Friday the studio gathered around a common problem and worked through techniques discovering more efficient methods for assembly and self-organizing around tasks and specializations, finding what was comfortable and fun. The result was a 3-4 hour wind down to the week from which, with a little extra work, an object was produced that represents the studio and belongs to everyone.
