A 20' tall snowflake structure inspired by Santiago Calatrava's design of the surrounding architecture.

Summary

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Frost is an interactive sculpture designed to illuminate Brookfield Place for the festive season, along with Gust, its companion piece. The work is inspired by the Santiago Calatrava-designed architecture of the surrounding Galleria, the geometry of a single snowflake, and the allure of a freshly frosted-over window pane.

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Design Concept

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As with Gust, Frost takes uses the iconic “y”-shaped structural members of the Allen Lambert Galleria as the starting point of its design. The original architecture is inspired by fractal patterns in nature. The Snowfall series adapts this form, repeating and rotating it, to create a new crystalline "snowflake" structure.

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Interaction and Technology

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Frost uses cutting-edge technology to interact with the space and its audience in a number of different ways. Internally illuminated with an array of color-changing LED panels, it responds to physical touch. When the viewer's hand runs across the sculpture, it leaves a momentary streak of color. The interaction evokes the effect of writing on a frosted window pane.

The sculpture is also networked to the lighting of the galleria so when a user casts a streak of light on the surface of the structure, they do the same across the entire space.