Last week Taro’s Origami Studio embarked on yet another large scale installation for a prestigious worldwide brand.  Over the course of the last month, the Taro’s staff worked with the people at the Cadillac House in Lower Manhattan to design from scratch, render, select colors for, fold, and install a massive origami dove flock to fly from their brand new XT4 vehicle and into the rest of their building.  Below we’ll describe the steps the staff went through to turn this dream into reality.

Design Work:

Building off past projects, the Taro’s Origami lead designer Frank Ling created a few computer renders of doves and structures to support them inside the building.  Then, after visiting the space and getting some measurements and blueprints of the location, he was able to create a specific render that was unique to the requirements of the Cadillac team.  The XT4 would actually be placed in a separate room than the rest of the space, but by having hte flock of doves fly nearby, he was able to seamlessly make the flock appear to be flying through the windows and connect the 2 spaces.

Engineering:

After the general shape and design of the project was decided on, the team moved on to some light engineering to make sure that the design that was created could safely fit in the space and also the ensure that the materials and supports were strong enough to withstand anything.  First was the process of overlaying the origami design onto the existing blueprints of the space and then secondly was creating a side view of all the attachment hardware for the Cadillac team to inspect.  Then all the parts were ordered and custom cut for the installation.

Color and Paper Choices:

Next up was a very specific process of picking out which colors to use for the doves.  The goal was to match them as closely as possible to a new Cadillac commercial that will air shortly.  In order to ensure that the paper and the colors were exactly what Cadillac wanted, the Taro’s staff went directly to the headquarters and hand delivered paper samples for them the inspect and try out different combinations.

Installation:

After all the insurance certificates and proper safety regulation forms were processed, on Oct 21, the Taro’s team of Frank Ling and Ben Friesen brought in and worked through the night to install the project at the Cadillac House.  They brought in their own scaffolding, custom designed and cut materials, along with the doves folded especially for the project.  In total the installation itself took about 12 hours to complete.  Below you will be able to see step-by-step how the team brought it all to life.

Before:

Here are a few photos of the space to see what it looked like before the installation.

Platform Installation:

After setting up all the safety equipment for the installation, Frank and Ben moved on to the process of taping the outlines of the support platforms and the drilling holes for the anchors to latch into.

Once the holes were drilled and the anchors secured, the team attached the platforms with some locking carabiners and steel cables.  This then provided a place for the thin plastic dowel rods to slid through in the pre-drilled holes on each of the platforms.  Once the dowels were strung through, they used gasket connectors to ratchet on top of the platforms to make sure they were secured.

Dove Installation:

One of the last and most entertaining parts of the project was to sting each of the over 120 custom doves onto the rods.  There is also a custom cardboard spacer that was placed inside each dove to make sure it wouldn’t slide up and down the pole.  Then after all the doves were installed the last step was to arrange them into the flock formation, trim the ends and voila! the project was complete.

After:

Finally, after about a month of preparation and planning, the Cadillac House had its very own resident flock of origami doves to trail their brand new XT4!  The installation is up through October 28th, so if you’re int he New York City Area, be sure to check it out!