By Jorge Casuso

July 27, 2010 - Motorists entering Parking Structure 7 at the newly-remodeled Santa Monica Place will be greeted with a glittering aggregation of 335 mirror-polished stainless steel spheres to be installed Tuesday night.

Cradle, a large-scale permanent public artwork measuring 39 ft. wide and 36 ft. high, will be installed on the east-facing shear wall of the sructure. Each ball is suspended from the wall by a cable and locked in position by a combination of gravity and neighboring balls, City officials said.

"Cradle operates structurally like an enormous Newton’s Cradle -- the ubiquitous toy found on desks everywhere," said Malina Moore, the City's Public Art Coordinator. "As a whole, the balls imply an articulated surface suggestive of foam or sea life."

Fourth Street will be closed intermittenly as the artwork makes its way northbound from the Civic Auditorium parking lot at around 7 p.m. It will be offloaded and lifted into place against the wall and installed throughout the night. Installation is expected to be complete by 6 a.m. Wednesday.

The new sculpture is a part of the City of Santa Monica’s Percent for Art Program. Ball Nogues Studio was selected in 2008 to create a unique, site-specific artwork for Santa Monica’s Parking Structure 7.

The work is part of a façade overhaul designed by the local architectural firm Pugh + Scarpa that also includes solar photovoltaic panels, trex-clad veneers and colored channel glass enclosing stairwells.

The $4.5 million façade improvements will “enhance the pedestrian experience by creating a more dynamic public space with improved connections between the mall and other downtown destinations,” staff wrote.

The façade improvements are bankrolled with agency funds allocated for structure improvements, as well as the $1.4 million payment from Macerich for removing part of Structure 7.