Student Design Integration into Freeway Public Art

It is an interesting challenge to begin to explore ways to integrate student patterns into designs for concrete and laser cut metal. The freeway public art project that will incorporate student reflections on community is now at a phase where we need to address fabrication constraints. There will be metal "gateway" pillars and concrete wall patterns at the 101/Tulley and 101/Capitol Expressway freeway passes in San Jose, California built in April 2012. We are using Repper Pro to create the digital patterns from photos for some of the components.

Below are a few student sketches and beginning studies for fabrication. I am hoping that student statements about their designs will also be somehow linked at City of San Jose website.
Renaissance Academy, 6th Grade Student Radial Pattern sampling:

"Tamales" by Alyna C.

"Viva la Comunidad de Mexico en San Jose"
by Vanessa C.

"Cherry Blossom" by Ayana J.

"Nature Awaken" by Dominique

"Hot Delicious Food" by Dung P.

"Our Community of the Sun" by Luis C.

"Las Paletas" by Anayolis R.

Below: rough concept studies for large laser cut metal patterns for gateway pillars. (Yes, ligatures are needed so that there are no floating pieces, but these sketches are simply for concept and need to be refined a lot for fabrication. Designs will be digitally re rendered as vector based files (in Illustrator) and exported as either .DWG or .DXF files (AutoCAD format) for laser cutting.

Each of three panel designs will fall along a theme of either food, culture/celebration or environment/nature. The pattern studies below draw from selected student paper designs and from student digital photo patterns created in Repper Pro.