Ball-nogues Studio

“RIP CURL CANYON,” HOUSTON

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design, 12/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

A temporary installation commissioned by the Rice Gallery with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, exemplifies this three-year-old Los Angeles firm's investigations into modulating space. The 8-ton landscape, made from 4,000 sheets of cut cardboard mounted on a curved plywood frame, was assembled by hand and conceived as interactive—also in a low-tech way. Students, professors, and art and design aficionados alike were meant to lounge, study, nap, or generally cavort on the hills and valleys that filled the Rice Gallery. Technology, aka CAD drawings, played its part behind the scenes. For principals Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues, that's the wave of the future.

Shimoda Design Group

PROJECT “Peep Show,” Los Angeles.

STANDOUT Storefronts aglow with pink neon invited “voyeurs” to catch glimpses of miniature urban scenes, displayed on white foam podiums inside.

Office dA

PROJECT Voromuro, Boston.

STANDOUT The geometric analysis of a Voronoi diagram transformed a Civil War fort into CNC-milled translucent acrylic for the Institute of Contemporary Art's “Art on the Harbor Islands.”

CL3 Architects

PROJECT Ladder, Venice.

STANDOUT At the “Biennale di Venezia,” bamboo ladders were hand-knotted together to support red neon tubes above a red mirrored floor.