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Breaking the Mold

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design, 3/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

WHO: Michele Oka Doner.

WHAT: Cast-metal objects that turn nature into art.

HOW: "Working with Frances Halsband on a courthouse in Mississippi wasn't just about designing a lobby. It was understanding how people walk through space."

"I grew up in Miami Beach, where things always wash up on shore and fall out of trees," Michele Oka Doner says. "Now, I translate my fascination with nature into metal."

Doner Studio's coral, shells, and sea creatures in cast bronze and mother-of-pearl are embedded in the terrazzo floor of a Spillis Candela DMJM concourse at Miami International Airport. With R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband Architects, she transformed a security entrance at the Dan M. Russell, Jr., U.S. Courthouse in Gulfport, Mississippi, into a haunting world of laser-cut steel. Inlaid vines of aluminum and bronze enliven the terrazzo floor at New York's Center for Jewish History by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners. Meanwhile, an expanse of gilded laser-cut steel hovers just below the ceiling at Hong Kong's Joyce fashion boutique by Gert Voorjans.

Doner does small, too—she's fashioned silver jewelry for Christofle. Next up, a 2007 solo show at the Marlborough Gallery, New York.

Michele Oka Doner made this wax mold for the cast-bronze inlays that inhabit the terrazzo floor at Miami International Airport's concourse by Spillis Candela DMJM.

Clockwise from top left: More of the 5,000 molds made for Miami's airport. Doner with a wax sculpture for her show at the Marlborough Gallery, New York. Her silver-topped Celestial table. Cast-bronze door pulls for the Hong Kong fashion boutique Joyce by Gert Voorjans. The ongoing Miami airport project, called A Walk on the Beach. The gilded laser-cut steel canopy at Joyce. The laser-cut steel security scrim at R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband Architects's courthouse in Gulfport, Mississippi. Aluminum and bronze vines in the terrazzo floor at New York's Center for Jewish History by Beyer Blinder Belle.