Project: Maximillian’s Schell Installation

Designers:  Gaston Nogues and Benjamin Ball

Project Description: I just started this section because I would like to identify who I think are going to be the major players in tomorrow’s landscape. My first pick is a guy I worked with at Gehry named Gaston Nogues. He worked for Gehry for year, doing the various sculptural projects that pushed Gehry into the product and furniture design space. Gaston has teamed up with a fellow Gehry colleague, Benjamin Ball to form the Ball-Nogues Studio. Both graduates of Sci-Arc, their creative expression and uninhibted use of materials is emerging as a new form of creative sculptural expression. The project that first caught my attention was their Maximilian’s Schell Intallation. It is a vortex shaped temporary outdoor installation done at the Materials and Applications gallery in Los Angeles. They describe this project as it is “warping the flow of space with a featherweight rendition of a celestial black hole.”

Technical Critique: The project is constructed of tinted Mylar that is a beautiful trasparent yellow color. The shadow is not just a structure for shade, it reflects a beautiful sea of shades of yellow all around the space it covers, making the visitor feel as if he or she is in the vortex itself. It is one of those projects you see and say, wow, I wish I did that and… how the *$&% did they do that? Gaston and Ball clearly have a clever grasp of materials and they are not afraid of doing large scale pieces. They use Catia for rendering the object and then have the pieces fabricated. It is a not only a science to get this correct, you need to have incredible forsight for how it is going to hang in the space. This type of project shows that there is not only creativity behind the piece, it shows that there is an understanding of geometric modeling, and a grasp of real life fabrication. This piece is brilliant. I love the more recent work they are doing as well. They are getting recognition from Dwell, Icon, Metropolis, Surface and Architectural Record just to name a few. Keep an eye out for these guys – they are going to be a force.

*images Ball-Nogues Studio