Weathering a Design Storm

The collection of renovated buildings covering several square blocks a short distance from downtown Miami, appropriately named the Miami Design District, is the new home to many offices and showrooms of the city's interior-design community. To help publicize this trend, Sungraf (Hallandale, FL) reproduced works by painter Rosario Marquardt of RR Studios (Miami) into four large-format, flexible-face applications for two sides of a building.

The images were printed onto flexible vinyl using a Nur America Inc. Salsa® Digital system. Two oval images appear on the front of the building, while two rectangular images appear on the rear and are highly visible to motorists when traveling the causeway from Miami Beach to the Miami airport. The images posed serious installation challenges due to the area being subjected to stringent hurricane code regulations.NUR America Inc.

AAA Flag and Banner (Bal Harbor Village, FL), along with Roberto Behar of RR Studios, encountered several problems when installing the grand-format artwork reproductions on the rear of the building.

The artist did not want the traditional "wind rippled banner attached to the side of a building look." Rather, he wanted the reproductions to be smooth and taut, as if stretched over a frame. In short, he wanted them to look like an original painting on canvas. However, the building's offsets, indentations, gutters and blocked windows meant the installers could not mount the images flat on the building, like the artist wanted. Also, the building's elevation was out-of-plumb, top to bottom.

To solve these shortcomings, Sungraf constructed a "frameless" flexible-face extrusion frame to hold the vinyl away from the building's surface. All four sides of both images have pockets for fiberglass poles that lock to the frame.

Also, even though the images look alike, AAA, working with Sungraf, had to size the two rectangular graphics differently. One stands 34 ft., 5 in. tall and stretches 50 ft., 9 in. across; the other stands 34 ft. and stretches 51 ft., 11 in. Interestingly, the rectangular installations are not hurricane-proof. Should a full hurricane warning be issued, the installers are required to take down the faces, but leave the frames.

Advertisement

The oval images each measured approximately 22 x12 ft. at their widest points. RR Studios insisted that the images be presented flat, without the puckering often associated with grommeted installations. But because even one grommet in the vinyl can cause wrinkles, Sungraf constructed the faces with a webbing material on the reverse side along the outer perimeter to support the image.