At Design Miami, Chicago-based architect Jeanne Gang has teamed up with nature photographer James Balog on an installation called Thinning Ice. Produced for the haute crystal manufacturer Swarovski, the walls of the enclosure comprise a seventy-foot-long LCD screen that displays Balog’s documentary images of the Solheimajokull glacier in Austria.
(Steve Benisty/Courtesy Design Miami)
The interior of the space is populated with abstracted ice floes: tall tables that are pocked with amorphic depressions representing the random patterns creating by thawing ice and meltwater.
At the bottom of these holes are collections of strategically-lit crystals; in varying sizes and colors, both perfectly faceted and imperfectly formed, they are objects of contemplation.
The aluminum floor of the pavilion is split, the crack again filled with crystals. An architectural musing on the degrading polar environment, the piece itself is evanescent—it’s in place just for the duration of the art fair, which runs from December 3 through December 7.
(Steve Benisty/Courtesy Design Miami) (Steve Benisty/Courtesy Design Miami) (Steve Benisty/Courtesy Design Miami)
