Looking Up, 2011
installation at the Toronto Pearson International Airport, Terminal 1, International Departures

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Canadian designer BRUCE MAU is particularly famous for being the co-author of S,M,L,XL (in collaboration with REM KOOLHAAS), a compilation of essays, diary excerpts, travelogues, photographs, architectural plans, sketches, cartoons produced by O.M.A. in the past twenty years. MAU has since left his Toronto Studio and has devoted himself to “Massive Change Network”, a cultural theory project on the subject of design and design thinking.

One of his latest project is a 400-square-foot installation at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport entitled Looking Up. The photos, printed on translucent paper, are being arrayed in a rectangular grid on the south-facing windows of the international departures area (you need to be leaving the country to see it). It is an ongoing series of several hundred images of light in dynamic interaction with our changing atmosphere, as seen from BRUCE MAU‘s home near Lake Michigan and around the world.

Several years ago I began photographing the sky. This work came first out of my experience of seemingly constant travel. Time after time, my flight would disappear into the clouds and emerge into the brilliant light beyond. Each image at first appears as a simple, almost artifical gradient or flat color. On closer inspection, each surface reveals the dynamic volume and sublte complexity of the natural environment. Occasionally, there are clues that what you are looking at is real. – BRUCE MAU

Read more about this project here