Five Ten Marquette

Technology Meets Art

Five Ten Marquette’s existing corporate lobby possessed a simple elegance but lacked color and energy. This project solves for that shortcoming through the addition of sculptural and planar art installations. Rather than redressing the existing plaster, terrazzo and metal surfaces, the lobby’s negative space became our primary canvas. Looking at the building’s proximity to the Mississippi Flyway, a significant migratory route for waterfowl, we discovered similarities in the lobby’s own circulation patterns. Playing off of this, 555 custom fabricated figures, inspired by origami cranes, are suspended overhead to create an abstraction of migrating birds. A careful study of flocking patterns found in nature informed the composition’s swooping profile and perforated mass. The kinetic energy created by this static sculpture draws visitors through the lobby starting at its street entrance and moving upwards to its connection to the city’s 2nd Level Skyway network.

Partnering with a local fabricator, we engineered the shape of each painted aluminum “bird” so it would remain balanced while being suspended by only two wires. The ceiling’s chrome mounting screws fall along a defined grid, but the unique suspension height of each “bird” was visualized and adjusted using a digital parametric script we developed especially for this project.