Platinum Fine Arts and Art Installation Design · 2020
Bubble Forest Public Sculpture
- A' Design Award 2020 Platinum Winner in Fine Arts and Art Installation Design
- Awarded April 15, 2020
- CLIENT: Altarea
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 1,074,105
- Verification code 39E9F9C303 · Verify this award
About Bubble Forest Public Sculpture
"Bubble Forest" is a public sculpture made of acid resistant stainless steel. The material has the property of reflecting both natural and artificial light. During the night, it is illuminated with programmable RGB LED lamps. It was created as a reflection on the ability of plants to produce oxygen. The title forest consists of 18 steel stems/trunks ending with crowns in the form of spherical constructions representing a single air bubble. “Bubble Forest” refers to the terrestrial flora as well as to that known from the bottom of lakes, seas and oceans.
Mirek Struzik's Bubble Forest Public Sculpture represents a distinguished contribution to the expanding field of contemporary light installation, a practice that traces lineage through the luminous investigations of mid-twentieth-century light artists while extending toward new territories of public engagement and environmental transformation. The work demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how artificial luminosity can reshape spatial perception and create communal sites of wonder within urban contexts, transforming nocturnal environments into realms of chromatic enchantment. Technical accomplishment is evident in the precise engineering required to support the delicate illuminated heads atop slender stems of considerable height while maintaining the appearance of organic effortlessness, the structural armature successfully concealing its mechanical nature beneath botanical metaphor. The chromatic program reveals careful consideration of color theory, deploying complementary and split-complementary relationships across the spectrum from cool blues through verdant greens to warm magentas that create visual vibration and sustained interest as the eye travels among the various illuminated forms. The toroidal heads, constructed from what appears to be precisely arranged fiber optic or wire mesh elements, demonstrate meticulous craft in their radial patterning, each disc presenting concentric circles that enhance the sense of depth and dimensionality while allowing light to penetrate and emanate in graduated intensities. Thematically, the work engages enduring artistic preoccupations with nature and artifice, presenting technological construction that nonetheless evokes forest canopy, flower meadow, or bioluminescent marine environment. The vertical emphasis and clustering of forms suggests community and collective presence while individual variation among the heads introduces personality and organic irregularity. The presence of a human figure at lower right provides crucial scale reference, revealing the architectural ambition of the installation and its capacity to create immersive experiential environments. Viewers might contemplate how light installations transform our relationship to public space and darkness, inviting communities to gather in shared wonder beneath artificial constellations of human making.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- "Bubble Forest" is a public sculpture made of acid resistant stainless steel. The material has the property of reflecting both natural and artificial light. During the night, it is illuminated with programmable RGB LED lamps.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- 450cm x 450cm x 570cm
- Tags
- public space, sculpture, commercial space, public lighting, metal sculpture, abstract art, botanical sculpture, urban space
- Production Technology
- Sculpture made of electropolished, acid-resistant stainless steel and illuminated with RGB lights
- Design Challenge
- Discovering the spacial form that would be best suited to characterize the entrance to the biggest shopping mall in France, right next to the seaside.
- Project Duration
- The project started in April 2019 and finished with installation in Nice, France in October 2019
- Operation Flow
- The sculpture is a orientation spot on site and a popular objects for photographers and tourists
- Research
- The Bubble Forest was created as a result of deep studies of underwater flora and its ability to produce oxygen. The way to realize the idea of the project was to transfer the organic micro structures to the macro scale.
The main reason for such methodology was location of where the sculpture is installed - right next to the seaside, by the the biggest hopping mall in France, CAP 3000. - Inspiration
- Bubble Forest was created as a reflection on the ability of plants to produce oxygen. Bubble Forest refers to the terrestrial flora as well as to that known from the bottom of lakes, seas and oceans.
- Image Credits
- Photos #1, #2, #3, #4, #4 photographer - Mirek Struzik
Video - Grupa MagicLine - Patents
- Copyrights belong to STRUZIK ART Company
European Union Intellectual Property Office Certificate of Registration Nº 006435384-0001, Patent Holder: Struzik Art Mirosław Struzik, 2019, European Union
Colors of Bubble Forest Public Sculpture
Get Bubble Forest Public Sculpture
Design Interview about Bubble Forest Public Sculpture
Bubble Forest grows out of the same principle behind all my work: nature has already solved most structural problems, and my job is to translate its micro forms to a monumental macro scale.
The main goal was creating a piece that will become a real, iconic landmark for the place it was made for - CAP3000 shopping mall in Nice, France. The real audience are people who come there, I wanted to give them something that will make their visits more interesting and that they would want to take a photo with.
It started a series of sculptures that keeps growing. After the Bubble Forest, I created many more sculptures utilizing similar techniques and design language. I'm now also working on creating kinetic version of a sculpture based on the same concept.
Around 4 months.
I was considering a number of options for this location and we discussed them with the client. Finally, together we decided that the Bubble Forest. What convinced us to make this choice was proximity of the sea and being inspired by the natural phenomena
STRUZIK ART LTD designs, fabricates and installs every sculpture ourselves, working with trusted steel and engineering partners — we are not an intermediary and nothing is outsourced to another studio. I have no plans to license the design or its production rights to another company.
Nature was my inspiration, as usually. This sculpture was created for a specific location by the beach. The idea was to consider how oxygen comes from the floral vegetation on the bottom of the sea.
It was all my own creation, I avoid taking inspiration from the work of other artists and always strive towards creating something completely new.
People who come shopping to CAP3000. I love seeing selfies people take and post in Instagram.
I try not to compare my work to other sculptures, I'm quite sure Bubble Forest is a very unique work.
The name is not as important as the sculpture itself, for me. The name is rather descriptive and serves a more practical function.
Everything that was available back then - from basic sketches, through 3D scanning of a model and advanced CAD tools and ray traced lighting simulations.
When looking at the sculpture, viewers see many different things, as it is open for interpretation. Some people see jellyfish, some see bubbles of air, some see seaweed. However, I'm very happy that they all trace back to my initial inspiration. I think that it's a very unique success.
Realizing eighteen trunks at monumental scale needed a full team beyond the concept: structural engineers, steel fabricators for cutting, bending, welding and electropolishing, and lighting programmers for the RGB system.
Three roles: engineering technology makes an eighteen-trunk steel grove structurally possible at this scale and safe in a high-traffic public space, and lighting technology gives the work a second life after dark — slow, continuous color transitions rather than anything abrupt, so it never competes with or startles the people around it. Additionally, I use very advanced surface processing technology. Electropolishing allows it to "lead" the light along the surface, rather than simply reflect it.
There are some aspects of design that need to be data based - we need to approach the engineering very strictly, because of needed structural integrity of the sculpture. Moreover, material properties need to be compared due to their different characteristics, including light dispersion aspects. Same goes for designing the whole lighting system and its electronic system.
The main challenge was structural: eighteen tall steel trunks in a public, high-foot-traffic commercial space have to be engineered like small buildings, each independently safe, while still reading as one grove. A second challenge was logistical — fabricating in Poland and transporting and installing the full set in Nice. However, my team is very experienced and it all went smoothly.
I take part in international competitions all the time - it's the main source of my clients.
This project gave ma a lot of amazing experience. I closely cooperated with French engineers responsible for building the CAP3000 shopping. I was especially satisfied after not only my sculpture was awarded the platinum design award, but also the building itself was selected as one of the best architectonic pieces of art in Europe that year.
I'd add a word of thanks to CAP 3000 and Altarea for trusting a grove of eighteen steel trees inside a shopping center — it's an unusual thing to commission, and it's exactly the kind of daily, unglamorous site where I think public art belongs.