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This large customizable digital glass clock is programmed to display time and weather, and can be set to read directly or mirrored in reverse as a projection on the ground. The installation works under the high winds, heavy traffic, and harsh weather conditions of the Colorado rail station.

Not Whole Fence pays homage to the simpler days of baseball, riffing on the mythic image of kids to trying to catch a glimpse of the ballgame through a knothole in a wooden fence. Located on a major intersection in El Paso, The work links the ballgame, a playground and the street. It provides the security of a partition, while facilitating coincidental encounters with the game from the sidewalk.

The shape suggests one colossal wood picket turned on its side and wrapped around the stadium, with “knotholes” that are big enough for groups of people to view the game from the sidewalk.

It was fabricated from custom aluminum extrusions. Individual extrusions were CNC milled with a wood grain pattern and anodized a warm copper hue. The grain pattern allows light to pass through the fence while the ribs diffuse the light.

Designers and Principals in Charge: Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues

Project Manager: Mora Nabi

Ball-Nogues Project Team: Andrew Fastman, Michael Anthony Fontana, Christine Forster-Jones, Emma Helgerson, Cory Hill, James Jones, Allison Porterfield, Rafael Sampaio Rocha, Forster Rudolph.

Design and Fabrication and Installation Supervision by Ball-Nogues Studio.

Engineering Consultant: Buro Happold Los Angeles, Jean-Pierre Chakar, PE

Specialty Fabrication and Consulting: Neal Feay Co

Installation Consultant: Industrial Stainless International, Tim Downing

Air Garden embodies the qualities of light and space that are unique to Los Angeles. Like the city itself, it does not have a distinct beginning or end; inside or outside; back or front. It is both an object and an atmosphere. Its appearance is not static as it is predicated on changing quality of light in the north light well at any hour of the day.  Air Garden is a serene moment amidst the hectic action and movement within the airport.  LAX is a city among cities that envelops the globe, networked through a system of concourses, gates, terminals and connecting flights; it is an international metropolis of movement.  Air Garden is a pause within this movement; a place for reflection and repose, an opportunity for the traveler to daydream. Within the confines of passport kiosks, security checkpoints, ticket counters, and other forms surveillance and control, it is our aim for this work to engender a sense of freedom

Like most gardens, it cannot be comprehended from a single point of view; and by participating in the ambulatory movement customary to the airport experience; it is inherently linked to the trajectory of one’s journey through the City of Cities. Its components are made of gestural volumes of color hovering within an immense array of catenaries.  These voluminous brush strokes on a translucent three dimensional canvas dissolve into washes of color then snap back into clear strokes with one’s changing perspective. They might be perceived as episodes forming an inconclusive riddle without a definitive resolution even after the complete cycle of one’s journey.  Our hope is that Air Garden procures a mental clearing for the voyager that is a respite from the pressures of travel and produce a felicitous condition for daydreaming.

The work is like a cloud inside the light well, which can be clearly described using a term from chemistry: suspension. A suspension is a heterogeneous fluid or gas with solid particles more or less evenly dispersed within in it.  It is not opaque but more like a ubiquitous fog permeating the space.  Therefore, the Air Garden will not obstruct the viewers’ perspective through the light well nor into the surrounding spaces that showcase the human activities of the airport.  While the environment is interspersed with the metallic bead chain catenaries, it is also constructed from the negative space between the catenaries; sight extends into and throughout the building.

When developing the color composition of Air Garden we looked at the organization inherent in the architecture.  We intend to shape color in three dimensions to echo the architectural order of the Bradley West Terminal by mimicking the shadows cast onto the array of catenaries by the structure members of the light well itself.  We chose two dates at which to cast the shadows, the summer solstice and the vernal equinox.

To better understand the effectiveness of the hovering colored forms within the Air Garden we applied our findings from precursory research on theories of perception.  Testing in Gestalt psychology has proven that our mind puts together what is not explicitly present and imposes meaning and structure on visual input.  These theories support our assumption that the traveler will mentally connect the architectural order of the building across the void of the light well by way of color painted onto the cloud of bead chain. For this reason, we are able to achieve a visual connection without having to precisely replicate the geometry of the building but rather to imply its presence.

The reflective qualities of the bead chain, that form the catenaries, create a sense of vastness through the play of light in space.  Each one is a miniature convex mirror, capturing light from all corners of the space as well as from the adjacent balls.  The project evokes a sense of immensity through this reflective dance of color and light.  The consistent repetition of highlights on each bead produces a condition of being ensconced in a place that is both proximate and seemingly vast.
Los Angeles is a region full of creative opportunity and innovation; Air Garden represents these characteristics.  Here, creative economies thrive.  The real meets the unreal and Air Garden is a metaphor for this through its presence as both painted gesture and atmosphere.  Much like the infinite space in a traveler’s momentary lucid daydream, Los Angeles is a boundless expanse.  Our city seems limitless when coasting its highway’s smooth curves that beautifully pattern its extensive landscape with measured grace and elegance.  Air Garden embodies the sublime qualities of the utopian paradise we call home, Los Angeles.

Credits:
Artist and Designer: Ball-Nogues Studio
Commissioning Agency: City of Los Angeles, through its Department of Cultural Affairs and its Department of Airports

Fabricator: Ball-Nogues Studio
Structural Engineer: Buro Happold, Los Angeles
Custom Software: www.sparcestudio.com
Rigging: LA Propoint

Located within the two-story entryway, this installation embraces the themes of water and fluidity, resembling a thickened atmosphere of waves that is neither a solid object nor emptiness but has qualities of both. Approximately five miles of custom-dyed chains make an intricate system of overlapping curves, suggesting a 3D abstract painting that morphs in appearance with vantage point.

In historical paintings of religious subjects, artists traditionally represented the spiritual status of gods, kings, and saints by surrounding the body of these holy figures with a luminous formation suggestive of radiating shafts of light. Variously referred to as the aureole, nimbus, or glory, notions of this motif have been in the vernacular since before Christianity and continue to have meaning in cultures throughout the world.

At the intersection of La Brea Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, we celebrated a typical glass corner of a six-story apartment building with our own Glory. At over five stories high it is visible from a distance of several blocks. Rather than celebrating a holy personage, our gleaming frame highlights the absence of a religious icon and calls into question the status of a prosaic element in the urban landscape.  By inviting the viewer to fill in the blank, we ask what she sees as sacred in her daily commute through Los Angeles, a place that hosts a spectrum of outlooks on spirituality and where celebrity confers a status near that of holiness.

On close inspection, Corner Glory suggests the teeth of a comb or long eyelashes jutting out from the building. The combination of mirror polished stainless steel and spiky shapes blurs the distinction between surface and background to give the impression of an immaterial presence emanating from the corner.  As the viewer moves along the boulevards, the reflection of moving cars and changing lighting conditions transform the appearance of Corner Glory into effervescent light.

The owners of the Huxley Apartments at Fountain and La Brea commissioned this artwork for a new courtyard adjacent to the sidewalk on La Brea Avenue. Our first impulse was to suspend a structure over the courtyard that was self-referential, of a dramatically different language than the Huxley building itself.  Stud Wall takes cues from a pair of sources, our previous work entitled Cradle in Santa Monica and leather biker jackets, which owners customize with assortments of studs, spikes and other ornaments.

These spiky jackets have served as emblems of cool masculinity and personal liberty since the ‘50’s. Greaser, motorcyclist, gay and music subcultures (punks, goths, metalheads, rivetheads), have worn black leather for protective and often fashionable reasons, occasionally with the intention to create an intimidating appearance.  Each of these subcultures has been associated with West Hollywood at one time or another.

We studied the details of several jackets, in particular the arrangement of studs relative to leather panels of the garments themselves.  While many of the patterns followed the contours of the panels they inhabited, we were more drawn to those that operated independent of the substrate.  These patterns are not relegated to the boundary of the leather panels therefore becoming a kind of layer, superimposed over the jacket.

We added such a layer of studs to crumpled surface of the installation, imbuing a unique geometry over that of the ¼” stainless steel plates into which they are inserted.  The studs also serve a structural purpose – by providing extra weight to the structure. Contemporary design abhors weight. It is customary for designers to view lightness as an ideal quality.  That this project was a kind of hovering surface, subject to uplift caused by wind loads, demanded that it be as heavy as possible. So, we added the studs to increase its weight to nearly 4000 pounds.

As we developed the design, and as the engineers asked that more and more weight be added, the stud layer took on an increasingly aggressive look. The result, Stud Wall, seemed like it might hurt someone were they to come to close. The Huxley wears it well.

Confluence Park is an initiative of the San Antonio River Foundation to transform a former industrial laydown yard into an outdoor learning center. With environmental education as an overarching theme, the design will incorporate creative learning opportunities into virtually every aspect of the park. To this end, the park is designed as one large organism, with various interdependent areas intricately linked through resource sharing and circulation systems. These thoughtfully designed systems, such as a water collection and redistribution system, reduce the park’s dependence on the local area’s natural resources as well as educate the public about natural ecological processes and sustainable practices.

Created for the Exhibition Almost Anything Goes: Architecture and Inclusivity at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara

On view: January 5 – March 16, 2014

Wall Text:

The boundaries between cultural disciplines are not easy to cross. A guy who studies sculpture and goes on to create furniture will probably never see his work in the MoMA design collection. An architect who refers to her installations as “art” will undoubtedly provoke derision from the ranks within the fine arts academy.

In determining a title for this installation, one reason Radiant came to mind is because the figures illuminate the space within which they are situated. Body seemed appropriate because we explored the human figure; and Glob because we developed a process for producing the work in paper pulp – formless oatmeal-like goo commonly used to make protective packaging for consumer products.

Each of the three figures in the Radiant Body Globs installation—Figure Head, Come to Mama, and Grandpa Lost his Cane—can be displayed as part of the installation or individually as a sculpture or lamp.
Principals in Charge: Gaston Nogues, Benjamin Ball

Project Manager: Mora Nabi

Project Team: Mora Nabi, Christine Forster-Jones, Aaron Goldman

Principals and Designers in Charge: Gaston Nogues and Benjamin Ball

Project Manager: Daniel Berlin

Project Team: Andy Fastman, James Jones, Christine Forster-Jones, Allison Myers, Raphael Moguel, Bhumi Patel, Emma Helgerson, Marissa Ritchen, Allison Porterfield, Richy Garcia, Caroline Duncan