Ned Kahn and the Aesthetic of Turbulence: The Transbay Transit Center Project • Enhancing Perception of Natural Phenomena through Art

Bay Area artist Ned Kahn has lived in San Francisco for over 20 years, many of which were spent designing educational exhibits at the world renowned Exploratorium. He now resides in Sonoma County where he is expanding his studies and laboratory space.

The Transbay Transit Center Installation: Ned is installing a series of water jets on the rooftop park that will be triggered by sensors that respond to the vibrations of the flow of buses on the deck below. The frequency, motion and height of the jets will correspond to the level of activity on the bus deck, making the arrivals and departures of the buses visible and tangible through their choreographed effect on the water.

Mr. Kahn’s work is a seamless synthesis of nature, art and technology. With extraordinary technical ability, he demonstrates the versatility of turbulent systems, such as the vortices of wind and water. His dazzlingly complex but comprehendible images of nature respond to viewers, conform to architectural structures, and reveal and make visible inherent environmental conditions.

Mr. Kahn has received numerous awards for his work, including the 2003 MacArthur Fellowship, Cooper-Hewitt’s 2005 National Design Award for Landscape Design, and Americans for the Art’s Public Art Network Year in Review Awards in 2005, 2006 and 2009. Mr. Kahn has completed large- scale projects throughout the United States, as well as abroad in the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Germany, Switzerland, and Singapore. He is working on water and wind-based projects throughout the world with renowned architects such as Moshe Safdie.