Queen of Spades

The Queen of Spades was to be performed by the San Francisco Opera, and the opera wanted to build a project on-site for theater attendees, and also build a small project downtown San Francisco for additional visibility.  

The on-site project was placed in the lobby and was very unique in that it was freestanding (no tape, no glue, no bending or folding), but was held together with giant clamps I had designed and fabricated.  The idea came from the desire to have a house of cards that could be moved in and out of the lobby.  How does it work?  Well, and strange as it sounds, the more weight you put on a house of cards, the stronger it gets—until you simply overload it and it crushes. So, in this case, the giant clamps just acted like a press to hold everything together.

The off-site project was completed in the Ferragamo storefront window in downtown San Francisco.  For this I built a fictitious city, and the opera used the spectacle to advertise the Queen of Spades.