The Experiential Design Index

Flowers — Google 9th Avenue Office

Flowers, a kinetic installation of 160 electromechanical flowers suspended in Google's 9th Avenue office lobby in New York City, was completed in December 2021 by Deeplocal; it was named Environmental category winner and Best-in-Show at Communication Arts' 2023 Interactive competition.

VenueGoogle 9th Avenue Office
Project typeInstallation
StatusCompleted
Year completed2021
Technologieskinetic sculpture, real-time sensing, machine learning

Credits

FirmRoleNote
deeplocal Media Design & Software AI / Machine Learning Design, engineering, and fabrication of the kinetic installation and its real-time sensing/machine-learning control software. .

Description

The 160 flowers bloom in stages as visitors move through the lobby below, using real-time sensing and machine learning (Grasshopper/Python for algorithmic layout, openCV/PoseNet for gesture recognition) to react to movement; at night, choreography is instead cued by pedestrians visible from the street. The flowers are fabricated from powder-coated metal and printed Tyvek.

Sources