While “high-tech” companies often live by the motto “move fast and break things,” we believe Art has the ability to move slow, illuminate system effects, generate thoughtful consideration, and provide a pathway towards greater connections between contemporary existence and natural ecosystems.

Tasked with creating a shade canopy for a central plaza, we chose to create an ode to the duality of technology and nature. Since both often utilize aspects of chaos, order, and precariousness, we present a dichotomy of an orderly structural base and frenetically folded canopy.

The design is meant to symbolize human evolution in a bottom-up progression. Human technology has mostly moved from simple to complex- and has thus far tended towards fast-moving disruption of natural patterns instead of discovering an identity of respectful and deliberate co-evolution with and within nature.

The canopy contains a set of “characters” dancing together in both order and chaos. There is an upward shift away from strict order towards combinations of binary and natural elements. Yet every so often there exist disruptive elements of out-of-place words distorting the patterns while comprising multiple connotations.

The pattern is unfinished, even at the top. The apexes may be seen as finite or infinite, depending on how we choose to see. Or depending on how we choose to believe. Or simply on how we choose to act.

Artist: coLAB studio, llc

Engineer: Dave Schott, Simply Structural

Parametric Design: Pattern Design Studio

Fabrication: Southwest Fabrication

Client: Culdesac

Photos by Matt Winquist

(last two photos by Matthew Salenger)