FreelandBuck Digitally Fabricates Historic Ceilings at Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery

The Renwick Gallery in Washington is home to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s contemporary craft collection. So, it’s fitting that its inaugural large-scale commission combines digital fabrication with purely U.S. references. Parallax Gap by architecture firm FreelandBuck interprets nine ceilings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries from such structures as Minneapolis City Hall and Cincinnati Union Terminal into a puzzle of planes hung from steel aircraft cable from the gallery’s ceiling. “They’re generally contemporaneous with the Renwick, so they enhance its already rich architectural history,” partner David Freeland says of the selection. To execute the installation, up through February 11, latticed drawings were created in Rhinoceros and Grasshopper software, printed on polypropylene panels, then cut and attached to aluminum frames.
 

> See more from the July 2017 issue of Interior Design