At the 2019 Industrial Fabrics Association International Expo, the IFAI announced the winners of their annual International Achievement Awards. Five projects that Transformit designed, fabricated, and/or contributed to were recipients of an IAA. Each of these installations represent a collaboration of art and design with multiple partners.
Special thanks and congratulations to our co-winners and collaborators: Conservation International, Cool Shadow (of Loisos + Ubbelohde), Maine Craft Gallery, Quiring General, Scattergood Design, SmithGroup, Thinc Design, Vision3, and Studio HHH, who's original sculpture 'Serpentine', created for Illuminus Boston and featuring eight Transformit 'Pixies', won Best in Category for Fabric Environments as well as receiving top honors with an Award of Excellence in the Fabric Art sub-category.
2019 Industrial Fabrics Association International / International Achievement Awards
Serpentine
Best in Category — Fabric Environments
Award of Excellence — Fabric Environments / Fabric Art
Designed by Studio HHH for Illuminus Boston, this temporary installation features eight Transformit Pixies, stretch-fabric sculptural elements from our ready-made Dream Spinners collection, configured in a 40’ serpentine array. Suspended from the lobby ceiling of the Exchange at 100 Federal Street in Boston, Massachusetts, the installation was illuminated with projection-mapped lighting and video art to create a fluid and changing visual experience. The result was a sculptural experience that offered interactions unique to the viewer's approach to the piece, whether this was seated or walking below, passing by slowly on foot or more rapidly by car, or viewing from afar.
First Light: Solstice
Outstanding Achievement — Fabric Environments / Fabric Art
The name of the native people of Maine, Wabanaki, means "People of the First Light." Maine, or more precisely, Cadillac Mountain, on Mt. Desert Island in Acadia National Park, is the first place in the United States to receive the sun's morning light. In creating this piece — a window art installation at Maine Craft Portland, the Portland, Maine gallery of the Maine Craft Association — Cynthia Thompson, the artist and founder of Transformit, imagined how the light of the winter solstice would look, low in the sky, with the sun's rays streaming into our world and into the windows of Maine Craft Portland’s gallery.
Drop in the Ocean "Jellyfish"
Award of Excellence — Fabric Environments / Interior Display
When you step into the Jellyfish, and slip on the virtual reality goggles, you are transported to the depths the ocean and find yourself journeying upon a living jellyfish as it swims from the deep darkness glimmering with microscopic creatures towards the shimmering surface. Along the way you are confronted by the abundance of micro-plastics and trash that are disrupting ocean ecosystems. This walk-through, 16’ tall by 30’ wide, abstract Jellyfish was designed by Thinc Design and built by Transformit to house Drop in the Ocean, a VR experience produced by Vision3 and Conservation International.
Visit the Conservation International website for a taste of Drop in the Ocean — view the trailer with music by Gold Panda and, courtesy of photographs from the archives of Academy Award-winning micro-photographer Peter Parks, meet the cast of ocean life impacted by plastics.
Acoustical FireFlys
Award of Excellence — Fabric Environments / Commercial Interiors
The architects at Scattergood Design crafted the new teen area at the Patten Free Library of Bath, Maine out of existing space within the library's stacks. To provide the appropriate acoustical dampening to this new room, Transformit created an array of eight customized 5’ x 8’ Sentry FireFlys suspended from the ceiling. Each FireFly, a frame-supported stretch wing, is custom-fit with sound-absorbing fabric backing sewn into the stretch-fabric face.
Interior Shade FireFlys
Outstanding Achievement — Awning & Canopy / Shade Sails
To artistically provide interior shade, twelve Transformit Sentry FireFlys, sculptural wings with internal frames, are suspended in the reception lobby of the Valley Children’s Medical Group in Modesto, California. Project architects, SmithGroup, engaged Cool Shadow, specialists in daylight simulation, to conduct a thermal comfort study of the atrium, approximating the interior shade the FireFly design would provide. Informed by Cool Shadow's study, each Sentry FireFly is custom built with a double layer of fabric to meet the architect's specifications for shade.