Flows Two Ways

Situated at 57 West, on West 57th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues, is a monumental outdoor sculpture known as Flows Two Ways. Commissioned by the Durst Organization and created by Stephen Glassman Studios, AIS was responsible for installation of the art piece.

Scaling eight stories at sixty-by-sixty feet, the work denotes the main entrance to VIA 57 WEST, the torqued tetrahedral residential and mixed-use courtscraper that marked Bjarke Ingels Group's first project in the Americas.

To install the technologically complex Flows Two Ways sculpture, AIS worked with engineering, architecture, and design teams to fabricate and install a layered construction and anchoring system, and with Milgo Bufkin on fabrication of the panelized façade.

Design considerations addressed transportation, handling, and installation. The layered eight-story, 32,000-pound assembly is composed of a stainless-steel mounting matrix embedded into the existing wall, 35 interlocking aluminum panels, nearly 400 sixty-foot pipe clusters rolling and flowing in three axes, and faceted metal boulders.

A sophisticated sliding plate system largely floats the 16-ton piece off the building, accommodating thermal expansion and forces generated by wind, rain, snow, and ice loads.