Phillip K. Smith III and SOM team up to create light-up, reflective installation that mirrors its Californian landscape

Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) and American artist Phillip K. Smith III have collaborated to create a site-specific installation that literally mirrors life. Commissioned by art collector Dallas Price and her husband, sculptor Bob Van Breda, Santa Monica Linear is a horizontal line of reflected sky inserted into a 110-foot vertical plane of lush, green landscape on the grounds of the couple’s home. Smith enlisted the help of SOM’s structural engineers in order to craft a perfectly level, extruded form, free from internal structural elements.  The resulting sculpture is a 30-foot-long, ultra-flat aluminum beam element, featuring a mirrored glass surface that sits on a 42-degree slope. Its positioning avoided the use of trucks and cranes, so it was installed by hand. The piece appears as a rectangle from one perspective, however, it is actually triangular.  By day, Santa Monica Linear narrowly reflects the sky and surrounding greenery. At night, internal LEDs create slowly shifti...