Location: Tribeca, New York
Type: Custom Fixture
Structure: Nickel Plated Plastic
Year: 2010
Project completed with
Bryan Young of Young Projects

The Light Hive is a full scale digitally fabricated construction located on a roof top deck in New York City. The entire ABS printed construction is plated in nickel to improve its weather resistance and give a reflective sheen to the shade. The lamps create both an atmosphere of light thrown into the surrounding space, as well as become sculptural objects in the roof top landscape. The use of parametric software is explored to determine at what level the variation of cells begin to lose legible repetition and instead achieve other performative and aesthetic effects. The cell variation is tightened in particular locations for structural connections, thickened in others for screening, and scaled in order to deal with the changing surface geometry.

At what point does the digitally designed and digitally fabricated object begin to leave these procedural origins and allow other sensations to emerge? And as a social centerpiece in a space for conversation, what norms can be transgressed into the grotesque or alien or obscene?