Ontario Place Light Exhibition – Silk

Type:
Installation

Team:
Denegri Bessai Studio, Urban Visuals, Afsah Ali, Pablo Espinal Henao, Cezzane Ilagan, Christian Paez Diaz, Sanjana Patel, Alex Reiner

Location:
Toronto, ON

Photography:
Scott Norsworthy

Designed as part of Ontario Place’s 3rd Annual Winter Light Exhibition and designed in collaboration with Urban Visuals, Silk is a temporary outdoor large-scale installation that extends from the studio’s applied research into light weight hybrid spatial structures inspired by natural and biological systems. Its experimental nature is a nod to the daring and innovative spirit of Ontario Place’s buildings and landscapes.

Emerging from the ground as delicate tendrils, Silk is an ethereal and light-weight structure that seeks to create space through a minimal envelope of thin but resilient threads. Carefully woven together, the silky strands gently delineate an inhabitable interior sanctum forming a cocoon that is paradoxically enveloping and porous. Soft glowing lights highlight the links in the weave, forming an organically shaped enveloping structural constellation that emerges from the innate qualities and behavior of the slender rods. These soft glowing lights pulsate throughout the night, their rhythm and intensity responding to the inhabitation of its gently defined space—a playful and graceful relationship between the cocoon and the occupant.