With only a few months to go before her daughter’s wedding, Barbara called Taro’s Origami Studio with a unique request, but she wasn’t expecting much. In fact, she told the studio this was the last company she was going to try and call, until she gave up. She was looking for a company to install a flock of origami cranes, sweeping through the wedding space in an artistic installation. In fact, she admitted on the phone to being quite surprised to hear from the staff that yes, that was something they could do.

The first thing the Taro’s Origami staff did was head over to the wedding space and talk through the different options the space provided and make sure it covered all of their needs. The space was the beautiful Brooklyn Winery atrium, and after taking some measurements, they went back to the studio to get to work.

After visiting the space, they created some detailed computer renders to scale to give a basic sense of what the installation would look like. The renders provided some important visual clarity on the arrangement and proper sizing of the cranes for the space.

The next phase of the project was to move into actual production. The paper for this project was special ordered; it had a flecked surface and glint allowing the lighting in the space could reflect it. Each sheet was cut to size and folding began.

After the cranes were all finished, Taro’s staff brainstormed on the best method for hanging the cranes.  Traditionally origami cranes can hang from a single point on their back, but in this case the studio artists wanted to make sure they had better control of the direction the cranes were going in, so instead of the one point (where they would rotate aimlessly in the breeze) they decided on attaching all the cranes from two points on the models, which you can see below.

Once strung, the focus was on what structure to hang them from. There were a couple of options talked about, including using existing material like chicken-wire. Ultimately the staff decided to design from scratch and fabricate custom platforms, which were CNC’d from a local Brooklyn studio. As pictured below, this provided many spots to attach and position them properly.

After all of this prep work, it was time to install the flock of cranes over the course of one Saturday morning.  Because of the height of the ceilings, they needed to rent giant ladders ladders and a truck to transport everything.

Going around the room, the Taro’s Senior Artist Frank Ling, (who also designed the installation an renders) attached the support structures and cranes around the space.  Each section was hung carefully, as to make sure the final look of the entire work gave the illusion of a flock of graceful cranes swooping through the wedding venue.

Here is a up-close look at some of the cranes, strings, and supports.

As a final detail, an LED cloud lamp was strung up among the flock.

Here’s a short video of the installation process as well.

After everything was finished, the installation was met with great fanfare from the wedding guests.  In fact, here is a quote from the client sent to Frank during the wedding: “OMG Frank, this is so beautiful and perfect…it’s really magical…such meticulous work…thank you from the bottom of my heart.”