On the Cover: 4 Public Art Installations Engage the Eye and the Mind
These four public art installations in Spain, Germany, and South Korea captivate passersby with their form, color, and texture.
“The convex and concave forms of the heads visually echoed the architecture.”
Designer: Jaume Plensa
Project: Invisibles
Location: Madrid
Standout: The site-specific installation in the glass-enclosed Palacio de Cristal, a 19th-century former conservatory, consisted of three of the sculptor’s signature human faces, these steel-mesh versions reaching 21 feet high, caught mid shush.
“It shows how an unconventional building material can partition a space.”
Designer: A+U Lab
Project: Woolscape
Location: Pusan, South Korea
Standout: In the lobby of the architecture and engineering building at the city’s national university, 12,000 lengths of dyed wool yarn are strung between timber frames and hung from nylon wire to function as a spatial device.
“Like sand, the spikes have the stability of a solid but can reconfigure like liquid.”
Designer: Institute for Computational Design and Construction, University of Stuttgart
Project: ICD Aggregate Pavilion
Location: Germany
Standout: Dropped in a campus building by a robot, 70,000 pieces of injection-molded recycled plastic interlocked into a tumbleweed structure around a void created by inflated balls that were subsequently removed.
“Successful cities of the future will seamlessly interweave nature and culture.”
Designer: Arne Quinze
Project: My Secret Garden
Location: Valencia, Spain
Standout: Juxtaposing Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences complex, six welded-aluminum, acrylic-painted sculptures were inspired by the wild flowers of the designer-artist’s native Belgium.
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