Projects: Large Installation

Meghan Edwards -- Interior Design, 12/1/2011 2:00:00 AM

Winner: Situ Studio
Project: "Reorder: An Architectural Environment By Situ Studio"
Location: Brooklyn, New York

They seem to sway and dance, the giant illuminated skirts ballooning over Doric columns at New York's Brooklyn Museum. Inaugurating its reopened great hall, ReOrder: An Architectural Environment by Situ Studio reinterprets 19th-century crinolines in acrylic solution-dyed antique white. Their inspiration derived from the complex history of the building-completed in 1897 by McKim, Mead & White and considered to have been disfigured in 1934, when the grand entry staircase was demolished. "While researching, we came across this removal of ornamentation and thought, We can bring it back on a whole new level," partner Aleksey Lukyanov-Cherny says. He accomplished this by attaching "collars" to the tops of the columns, then suspending rope from these close-fitting rings to support the hoops that create the skirtlike profiles. Farther down, rings clamp onto excess fabric that's been creased into French folds. At the base, the fabric disappears inside circular banquettes.

Merit: CL3 Architects
Project: Untitled
Location: Hong Kong

During the Mid-Autumn Festival's Lantern Wonderland carnival, computer-controlled LEDs inside 2,360 lanterns set a 122-foot-long bamboo fish shape aglow.

Merit: Phu Hoang Office and Rachely Rotem Studio
Project: "Exhale Environment"
Location: Miami Beach

Visitors to Art Basel Miami Beach encountered a shimmering canopy constructed from 7 miles of reflective or phosphorescent rope, swaying in the wind.

Merit: Peter Marino Architect
Project: "Les Lalanne"
Location: Paris

Part of the Arts Décoratifs museum became a make-believe château garden in­habited by the furniture and sculpture of Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne.