Project Description
This project is a site-specific luminary created with tension fabrics for the lobby of the Montaje, a new apartment building at Assembly Row in Somerville, Massachusetts, featuring images from the era when an assembly plant for the Ford Motor Company occupied the site. For the lobby of the Montaje, Cory Gans, a senior designer for Planeta Design Group, envisioned a sculptural lighting fixture using fabric for a semi-transparent, light and airy feeling, and historical photographs from the site. Gans worked in consultation with Tom Newhall, Creative Accounts Director at the tension-textile design and fabrication studioTransformit, to design this custom sculptural luminary for the Montaje. To Transformit's knowledge, nothing like this had been built before. Transformit's senior designer Jonathan Crowe began by prototyping frames with various construction materials, eventually choosing a narrow aluminum extrusion for the frames. To achieve the varied angles of the hexagons, which was not possible with standard hardware, Transformit designed and milled custom joinery in their machine shop. To affix the stretch fabric graphic panels and the white mesh, they employed their patented “FasTen” system, which enabled Transformit to invisibly secure the fabric to channels in the frames. Working with 3D models and a lighting program, they simulated how the chosen approach would look in the space. Once the client was satisfied with those early results, they built a full-size prototype of the smallest hexagon shape. To test how the graphics would look viewed from the front and reverse faces of the stretch fabric, they had graphics printed at various saturation levels. They also looked to see how the graphics appeared back-lit or front-lit, as well as when viewed directly or through the white mesh. By mocking up all these various options, their team could see that the historical “old” look Planeta’s Gans sought for the photographs was best achieved with the images printed and illuminated on the outside face, meaning the image seen inside the hexagonal column is viewed indirectly, through the fabric. Additionally, they adjusted the print saturation level such that the exterior faces, when viewed through the white mesh, had a light value comparable to that of the interior faces. Fitting the 20’ x 25’ tensioned mesh neatly and smoothly around the three truncated hexagonal columns required a hands-on touch. Transformit printed and laid out a full-scale ceiling plan on their shop floor, upon which they assembled the entire piece bottom-side up, positioning the hexagons in their precise locations on the “ceiling." Transformit's senior fabric designer, Denise Laverriere, hand-cut and fit the mesh to the perimeter and hexagon frames, editing the material much like a tailor fitting a bespoke dress or suit. Laverriere was on hand for the fixture’s installation as well—which was now flipped bottom-side down and installed overhead in the ceiling coffer—making final adjustments in the fabric to maintain its smooth and precise tailored finish. The luminary, as the signature centerpiece in the much-admired Montaje lobby, has become a favorite of Montaje residents. Additionally, it has been featured in the Boston Globe and Curbed Boston, as well as CODAworx, the internationally recognized collaborative that recognizes and supports the integration of commissioned art into interior, architectural, or public spaces.