Gradient Grid
Gradient Grid is a site-specific window installation created for the 2015 Toronto Design Offsite Festival, now known as DesignTO. Installed at a letterpress print shop in Toronto, the work reconsiders the storefront window as a layered threshold between public street and working interior.
A grid of nested, truncated pyramids forms a screen whose apertures vary in size. From the street, the blue and yellow surfaces alternately reveal and obscure the shop. As pedestrians move past, their viewing angle changes both the apparent density of the screen and the balance between its two colors. From within the shop, light passing through the openings brings the installation’s color into the interior.
The project draws on optical art, gradients, and nested geometries to investigate how a repeated element can produce visual change across a surface. Parametric modeling informed the proportions, aperture sizes, and distribution of the grid; its construction required the hand cutting and assembly of 336 pieces of corrugated plastic within a notched wooden frame. This relationship between computational variation and manual fabrication is central to the work: the screen’s visual effects arise from the precise arrangement of individually made parts.
Project information
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Festival: Toronto Design Offsite Festival, 2015
Status: Built installation
Materials: Blue and yellow corrugated plastic; wood