We’ve got creativity coming out our ears—and our windows.

Ever the over-achievers, our team couldn’t help but to get in on the fun when BLINK took over downtown Cincinnati again this fall. The bi-annual art and light festival draws over two million visitors throughout the four-day event that features projection mapping, murals, and interactive light displays. With our headquarters sitting just along the edge of the mapped route, we decided it was the perfect time to unleash our designers and build an installation that would enhance the experience for visitors.

Partnering with long-time collaborators KLH Engineers —with whom we’ve recently completed awe-inspiring custom light fixtures for DMG’s headquarters and The Aquifer at New Riff —the crew asked themselves this question: what does it look like when designers start to design?

Known as a design charrette in our industry, the collaborative process by which a group of designers draft a solution to a design problem became the focus of the installation. The team conceptualized a visual representation and started the process of evaluating materials, playing with scale, and testing infrastructure. There were many late nights of 3-D modeling, welding, molding, taping, wrapping…and ladders, so many ladders.  

The end result was an intertwined continuum of light, reflection, and the unknown.

Char·rette

A collaborative process by which a group of designers draft a solution to a design problem.

A visual representation of collaboration and unfettered creativity. Enter the stream of consciousness in the minds of interdisciplinary innovators, where ideas undulate—swirling, releasing, expanding—and morph back together again. The “what ifs” and the “yes, ands” are amplified as the collective brain explores every possibility, bringing the solution into focus.