Cool Fog

Fog Sculpture rendering in Olmsted Park over an island on Leverett Pond, Brookline, Massachusetts

To celebrate the 20^thanniversary of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya will exhibit five fog works along the historic urban parks that link more than a dozen Boston neighborhoods.

Fujiko Nakaya. Photo courtesy of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy

Nakaya is the daughter of the physicist and science essayist Ukichiro Nakaya, renowned for his work in glaciology and snow crystal photography. Like her father, Ms. Nakaya’s lifelong artistic investigation engages the element of water and instills a sense of wonder in everyday weather phenomena.

Working as part of the legendary group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), she first enshrouded the Pepsi Pavilion at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka in vaporous fog, becoming the first artist to create a sculptural fog environment.

Pepsi Pavilion Osada Japan Photo by Fujiko Nakaya

For the last forty years Nakaya has been partnering with Thomas Mee, a Los Angeles-based engineer.  Mee figured out a system for generating water-based artificial fog. To make it work the installation uses a special fog system that included high-pressure pumps and specifically designed fog nozzles. Several outside factors, like wind conditions, temperature and relative humidity in the environment, determined how intense or thick the fog would be at any given time.

Nakaya has established many other fog installations at galleries worldwide, including the Australian National Gallery, Canberra and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Photo by Phillip Maiwald

Here are two views of the Cloud Parking by Nakaya located in Linz, Australia – by day and at night:

Daytime photo of Cloud Parking by Fujiko Nakaya

Night View of Cloud Parking

Veil: The Glass House fog installation by Fujiko Nakaya in New Canaan, Connecticut Photo: theglasshouse.org

In Veil – shown above, Nakaya has wrapped the Glass House or Johnson House in a veil of dense mist that comes and goes. For approximately 10 to 15 minutes each hour, the Glass House will appear to vanish, only to return as the fog dissipates. Inside the structure, the sense of being outdoors will be temporarily suspended during the misty spells.

The 85-year-old artist describes her work as a “conversation with nature,”  creating shape-shifting, cloud-like, pure water forms that rhythmically appear and dissipate, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in the art while experiencing the landscape anew.

 

Concrete Ribbon Through the Clouds

The Millau viaduct bridge connects Paris to Barcelona in spectacular style. Nothing prepares first-time travelers barreling up toward Paris on Autoroute 75 for the Millau Viaduct, a long and towering white apparition that suddenly appears around a bend of the Massif Central. Framed by the windshield, seven lithe, stately masts, each with fanning cables, sail 1½ miles across the Tarn Gorge, holding up a roadbed 885 feet above the Tarn River, above even the cloud line that often shrouds the valley.

View of Millau Viaduct Bridge. Credit: Reuters

From its ribbon cutting in 2004, the viaduct was destined for Guinness: When finished, it had the highest road deck in Europe, the tallest piers and highest bridge tower in the world, and the longest launch of a bridge deck. It even displaced the Eiffel Tower as the country’s tallest structure. Engineers took the curvature of the Earth into their calculations. But more than a wonder of epic size and technology, the gracefully curved bridge, supported on needlelike piers, is a masterpiece of daring and majesty.

The architects wanted the structure to look as delicate as possible, almost floating so motorists would feel as if they were flying their cars. The designers buried the foundations deeply, so that the piers supporting the bridge would shoot up from the ground like “blades of grass” with no apparent support. They also extended a split at the top of the concrete pier beyond the roadway into the steel masts above, forming an A frame. From the valley below, each pier and mast merge to look like a single needle with an elongated eye.  They gently bent the bridge on a 12-mile radius, creating a smooth, shallow curve that gives motorists at either end a view of all the masts at the same time.

Postcard view of Millau Viaduct Bridge

The architects painted the cables white, so that they would disappear into the sky on overcast days, and complement the blue of clear skies. They banished any clutter, including signage. They illuminated the piers and the masts so that they appear to be bright exclamation points lofted in the night sky.

Night View of Millau viaduct bridge. Credit: Niels Boon/Flickr.com

The Viaduct Millau is a beautiful object as well as a beautiful experience no matter how you cross it.

Some of the 13.500 competitors cross the Millau bridge as they take part in the “Viaduc de Millau” race, a 23.7 kilometers long race on May 13, 2012 in Millau, southern France.
Credit: REMY GABALDA/AFP/Getty Images