A 15’ kinetic sculpture assembles the logo of a major financial institution through slow, graceful motion.

In 2023 a major American bank reached out to Patten Studio to inquire about an original artwork to fill a two story atrium in its new Manhattan financial center at the corner of 42nd Street and 6th Avenue. To take advantage of the atrium’s position at such a highly trafficked and iconic Manhattan intersection, Patten Studio proposed an anamorphic artwork that would play with a wide range of sightlines. The artwork would be visible from within the financial center, but also from the street, and from Bryant Park itself. By designing a piece intended to be experienced differently from different directions, Patten proposed to create a visually compelling artwork that would transform not just through its own motion, but through the motion of its viewers. 

Flagscape posed a number of mechanical engineering challenges. The panels, finished in the client’s brand colors, are made of an ultra lightweight honeycomb rotated by a high torque motor controlled by a Patten Studio Exponent Motor Controller board. The motor and controller needed to fit inside a 2″ diameter cavity in the tapered tube that supports each panel. The sculpture is designed to produce a maximally dynamic rotational choreography while precluding any pathways that would result in panel collision: Each panel spins along a unique rotational axis with only 4” of clearance with its neighbors. A number of alignment procedures were followed during installation to meet the artwork’s demanding tolerances, and to create a perfect anamorphosis of the client’s logo from the street. The tubes needed to be both tapered and bent to produce the logo anamorphosis while allowing for the full rotation of each panel; this required that the tubes be fabricated in segments that were then welded together. 

In order to produce the artwork’s rotation choreography, a 3D animation of Flagscape was created in Blender composed of several scenes that rotate the panels at different speeds and in different directions over the course of a 45 minute duration. The resulting choreography is mesmerizing and dynamic, showing the anamorphic logo at variable intervals. Custom software transposed this animation into motion commands for the Exponent Motor Controller.

Patten Studio worked closely with the general contractor Structure Tone to coordinate the artwork’s integration into the financial center. Flagscape’s foundation is a welded steel frame secured to the steel structural beams in the financial center’s floor and submerged in concrete. The sculpture’s power and data is run from a junction box in the basement up through the frame, through the poles that support the panels, to the motor assembly concealed inside the pole’s tapered end.

Flagscape debuted in May 2025 with the opening of the financial center. Located in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, the flagship opened to wide acclaim and media attention. Emblematic of the most recent triumph in the client’s $5 billion dollar brick and mortar investment, Flagscape set the tone for more than a hundred additional financial centers planned to open in the coming two years.