Roser Gray data-powered installation on display in downtown New Orleans

VectorFlow, a site-specific installation by Tulane School of Architecture Professor of Practice Cordula Roser Gray, is on display in Duncan Plaza in downtown New Orleans this summer. The project was supported by a Tulane University Lavin-Bernick faculty grant, as well as the Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking.

VectorFlow is designed to redefine a new public node in the plaza and offer an attraction point within the open space of the park. Five canopies aggregated to create a cluster within the larger field are coded in red to attract citizens and visitors to make the intervention visible and recognizable from different points of arrival to the park. Etched metal surfaces inscribed within the circular canopies provide shade and light effects during the day. At night, lights are activated to dematerialize and transform the canopies into responsive nodes able to render the flow of occupation of the plaza throughout the day.

The intervention acts as a system able to constantly trigger and monitor the flow of pedestrians through the park at varying times of the day. A sensor-based system receives data input from pedestrian passing by or people inhabiting the space. Data triggered by motion sensors are translated into dynamic LED light display which in return through intensity, color, movement and information display influences how citizens occupy and interact with the park. Through this citizens are offered the opportunity for engagement, interaction and activation while being exposed to underlying urban life-defining systems that in return can initiate desire for change while enabling space to be dynamic. The contextual changes rendered by the lighting strategy become an active, real-time transformation to the physical space while offering a permanent public node for meeting and gathering.

View a video demo of the light effects, project renderings, and site plans here.