Cradle: An Art Instillation In Santa Monica

We’ve all had something hanging over our head at some point. Well, Ball-Nogues Studio has taken the term to new heights… literally. If you happen to be walking the streets of Santa Monica, you just may see Cradle, a new art instillation that features an aggregate of mirror-polished, stainless steel spheres functioning structurally as an enormous Newton’s Cradle.

Cables originating from the same point on the exterior wall of a parking structure suspend all of the balls simultaneously. The team at Ball-Nogues Studio explains, “Aside from the Newton’s Cradle reference, we wanted the overall shape to elicit things that we thought might be slightly provocative when inserted into the glitzy Santa Monica urban landscape.

On one hand, the installation resembles a big banana hammock (the type worn by unashamed men at the beach) and on the other it suggests the female reproductive system.” the team goes on to state that “Cradle is as much a sculpture as it is an approach to making experimental structure in the post-digital era. We were interested in exploring ways of producing large scaled self-organizing structures.”

James Jones, the lead fabricator on the projects explained that their fabrication process was a bit like the process of slip casting ceramics except instead of pouring ceramic slip into a mold they ‘poured’ hundreds of spheres.  To their knowledge, this was the first time this technique has been used.

The next time you’re ambling through the streets of Santa Monica, keep your head up, design is in the air.

(Photographs Credited To Monica Nouwens)