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Glacial Façade

Ned Kahn

Issaquah Highlands Park & Ride

A transit center parking garage glitters and undulates like a glacier in the wind.

Ned Kahn. Glacial Façade, 2006. Stainless steel and aluminum. Issaquah Highlands Park & Ride, Issaquah, WA. King County Public Art Collection. Photo: joefreemanjunior.com

Ned Kahn wants to remind people “how wonderful and beautiful and simple the natural world is.” His mesmerizing kinetic artwork at the Issaquah Highlands Park & Ride, titled Glacial Façade, covers two sides of a massive vehicle parking garage with thousands of reflective panels that trace the subtle path of wind currents across it, fracturing the light like water or ice.

Designed for King County Metro Transit and located at Highland Drive NE and NE High Street, the work was inspired by the geological history of the site, which was profoundly altered by glaciers eons ago. Its vertical planes reference the facets of those glaciers and its undulating aluminum surface recalls the forces that once sculpted the region.
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Ned Kahn. Glacial Façade, 2006. Stainless steel and aluminum. Issaquah Highlands Park & Ride, Issaquah, WA. King County Public Art Collection. Photo: joefreemanjunior.com
Ned Kahn. Glacial Façade, 2006. Stainless steel and aluminum. Issaquah Highlands Park & Ride, Issaquah, WA. King County Public Art Collection. Photo: joefreemanjunior.com
Ned Kahn. Glacial Façade (detail), 2006. Stainless steel and aluminum. Issaquah Highlands Park & Ride, Issaquah, WA. King County Public Art Collection. Photo: joefreemanjunior.com