Client: Perceptive Software - Lexmark International

Overview

The sculpture is an integral part of the Perceptive Software Headquarters design concept (since renamed to a division of Lexmark). The new 238,000 square foot headquarters, located in Lenexa, Kansas, is comprised of two separate buildings connected by a five story glass atrium. The Atrium serves as a central gathering space, grand building entrance and as individual floor connections via curved bridges between buildings. The headquarters project design concept revolves around the idea of collective motion. The building design concept and the art piece are truly part of one single design concept message.

Goals

The goal of the sculpture is to represent a focal terminus and physical manifestation of the design concept into a three-dimensional sculpture, and serve as a metaphor for and reinforcement of the company’s primary objective of creating organization from chaos.
The glass atrium in which the sculpture is housed serves as a visual art gallery and center apex where the curved main spinal pathways of each building floor meet. This is yet another application of the whole building’s concept of creating movement towards a central location. The headquarters project is part of a larger urban mixed use development and is located at a major street intersection. Moreover, the sculpture lives in the central glass atrium where traditional architecture (stone and brick) meets modern urbanism (glass and steel). Not only is it a visual message for individuals who experience the space, but it is also a visual beacon to the community as a whole.

Process

The collaboration process began as an idea by artist and architect Danny Potts to create a punctuating visual message encapsulating the building concept design. Through many meetings with leaders from Perceptive Software and Lexmark, both the company and building concept soon became one central message.
Once the goal of the concept message was set, what began as a simple artist sketch became the launching point for the team at Dimensional Innovations. As the fabricators, they embarked on the monumental task to interpret the design, engineer, fabricate, and install the sculpture. Collaboration was absolutely vital and quite intensive throughout the process of fabricating and installing a complicated 55-foot tall sculpture on budget and on time. Other considerations made during the collaboration process included structural engineering, maintenance, and lighting of the art piece.

Additional Information

The 55-foot tall sculpture is comprised of 579 cubes. To reinforce the overall concept, these cubes smoothly transition from a rough finish and raw metal color at the top, representing the chaotic beginning of the motion of the sculpture, to a much finer, polished finish at the bottom, representing order. Additionally, the sculpture is suspended by 8,580 stainless steel cables. Lastly, the core of the sculpture is engineered to be lit with color-changing LEDs that cater to a mood or an event, and culminates in a larger cube highlighting the completion of the transition from chaos to organization.