s.o.f (the sound of fog)
For a private collector residence, we were asked to create a backyard fire-pit sculpture that could hold the intimacy of fire while unfolding as a light show. The project became an exploration of contradiction: an unlikely alliance between material heft and luminous haze.
The medium was corten tubes — dense, inert, industrial, and built to endure the elements. Our challenge was to transform 12,000 pounds of weight into something atmospheric, scattering light like fog. Each tube required incisions to capture and release light, but the angles were too extreme for a tube laser to follow — even with four axes. To keep the fog continuous — to preserve the abstraction of pixellated fog rendered in steel — we devised a hybrid method: laser-cut where possible, then hand-ground the cuts, carrying the negative figure–ground void seamlessly across hundreds of transitions.
The work assembled like weather, piece by piece until the cloud took shape. By day it is patina and shadow; by night, vapor and fire. And once complete, the variation in tube lengths produced a multi-pitched hum — collectively forming a note uncannily close to the foghorn at the mouth of San Francisco Bay.
Credits: Design: Andre Caradeclighting programming and install: Adam Bernsteinlandscape architect of record: Thuilot Associatesfabrication: SUMInstallation: SUM
shop assembly and tuning
hand “tuning” the boolean cuts
