When is the last time you felt a sense of Wonder?  For the staff of one of the newest family destinations in Manhattan the answer is daily.  The playful members space in NYC for curious, imaginative families (aptly named “the Wonder”) is always on the look-out for unique ways to liven up the ordinary.  That’s why when they teamed up with Sun-Maid, the largest raisin and dried fruit processor in the world to promote a new product they contacted Taro’s Origami Studio to bring their vision to life.  Using the reference photos provided by Sun-Maid, the Taro’s Origami design team led by Frank Ling, visited The Wonder, designed a series of origami grapes, leaves and vines, created renders of the options, and then folded and installed everything.

DESIGN & RENDERING

For a project like this, the design and rendering phase is one of the most crucial steps.  This allows the Taro’s artists and clients to see what the installation might look like int he space before actually going through and creating everything in full-size.  For this project, there were 3 total rounds of renders created- each of them with slight variations and improvements.  In fact, at the beginning of the process the Taro’s team estimated that they would be able to decorate and cover only 1 or 2 of the pillars in the space, but after seeing the renders of the space and extrapolating the numbers of models needed, they were able to increase that estimate to 3 of the pillars.

PRODUCTION

For the models themselves, the Taro’s team picked out a readily recognizable and repeatable shape, the waterbomb base, for the grapes themselves.  This design allowed the folders to create a total of over 270 of the grapes in less than a weekend.  Including the leaves and the vines, there were over 65 hours spent on the folding and assembly for the display.  You can take a look below at how Taro’s went about creating the grape bunches to attach to the vines.

INSTALLATION

Then after all the prep, design, and construction work was finished, Frank Ling and Ben Friesen went about installing the vines in the space.  Because of the extremely high ceilings, the two artists even brought in their own scaffolding to make sure they could reach the beams to anchor the project.  The installation process was also an artistic one though as the vines of the models needed to be anchored securely, but also appear to be independently growing up the pillars.

After a little less than 4 hours of installation work, the Taros Origami team was able to transform this bare pillar into a vineyard for The Wonder and Sun-Maid to display the new Sun-Maid products.   Take a look below at the before and after photos as well as an up-close look at the final version.