LIGHT HIVE

Location: Tribeca, New York
Type: Custom Fixture
Structure: Nickel Plated Plastic
Year: 2010
Project completed with
Bryan Young of Young Projects

Alien Objects

The Light Hive is a full scale digitally fabricated construction located on a roof top deck in New York City. The entire ABS printed construction is plated in nickel to improve its weather resistance and give a reflective sheen to the shade. The lamps create both an atmosphere of light thrown into the surrounding space, as well as become sculptural objects in the roof top landscape. The use of scripting is explored to determine at what level the variation of cells begin to lose legible repetition and instead achieve other performative and aesthetic effects. The cell variation is tightened in locations for structural connections, thickened in others for screening, and scaled to deal with the changing surface geometry.

At what point does the digitally designed and fabricated object begin to leave these procedural origins and allow other ideas to emerge? And as a social centerpiece in a space for conversation, what norms can be transgressed into the grotesque or alien or obscene? An object is never interesting simply because how it was designed, these light fixtures are a case in point. What if they were found to have been secreted by a colony of alien insects, the shell a residue of consuming the detritus of NYC ghosts and flowers. At least that’s what the security camera footage seems to suggest.