SOFTlab San Gennaro Festival North Gate installation
SOFTlab designed and installed a large outdoor installation in collaboration with ARUP for the North Gate of the 84th Annual Feast of San Gennaro. The eleven-day fun filled event is located in Little Italy on Mulberry St. between Houston and Prince St, NYC. Produced by The They Co. and Commissioned by Two Bridges Neighborhood Council.
The Feast of San Gennaro is an annual celebration of Italian-American culture along Mulberry Street in Little Italy!
“The final geometry was developed closely with the structural engineering firm Arup. The piece is completely held in tension from cables attached to the surrounding buildings. The shape is completely site specific and can only find its true form when attached at these specific points and tensioned with the proper lengths. Each piece is unique requiring custom software tools to be developed to fabricate the installation.”
— SOFTlab, Xtra Moenia New York, NY 2010
Suspended in tension between 3 buildings in the Nolita neighborhood in New York City, XtraMoenia floats over the pedestrian pathway. The form was derived from two distinct oculi, one pointing up to the historic Puck building, the other hanging down defining the pedestrian gathering space. The articulation of the panels act as a defined net with an overlay of fluttering colored panels casting filtered light onto the public zone.
The installation is made of 4224 laser cut panels. Each panel is a unique shape and overlaid with an articulated color photo gel. To create a larger spectrum of color, the color overlay overlapped to neighboring panels' midpoints. The panels are connected using over 6,000 aluminum grommets. The shape is held in complete tension using a complex system of cables and tubes attached to the surrounding buildings.
