>> Kenneth von Roenn attended Florida State University on a full athletic scholarship in springboard and platform diving.

Once he had earned his Bachelors Degree, his plan was to attend law school, which would help him to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War, and allow him to continue diving.

>> I was two weeks away from beginning to enter when I had an injury while training and that took all the money I had because I didn t have insurance, being in between colleges.

So I had to get a job.

>> Von Roenn was offered a temporary position as an errand boy and cleaner at Louisville Art Glass - an established stained glass company.

He was surprised to find he had an affinity for the work being done there and quickly developed a passion for stained glass.

>> It felt as though that that s really who I was.

And it was, it was a complete surprise and I doubted it.

>> The studio was struggling to find work so von Roenn went out and secured commissions to keep the workers busy.

He soon became the General Manager and, in 1975, was promoted to President of the Company.

It was during this period that he discovered The Language of Stained Glass - a book by Robert Sowers.

The book detailed the contemporary work of post-war German stained glass artists and it dramatically changed von Roenn s ideas about the potential of stained glass.

He was particularly intrigued by the work of Ludwig Schaffrath.

Many of Schaffrath s designs contained sweeping parallel lines which provided a sense of power and movement.

Young glass artists around the world were becoming influenced by Schaffrath s style, especially after he began giving design workshops in America and other countries.

The Schaffrath influence on von Roenn is apparent in these two sidelight windows he made for the Morton residence.

He had also been reading Robert Sowers book, Stained Glass: An Architectural Art , in which Sowers suggested that a window should be visually integrated with the building.

The design should work with the forms and colors that were seen through the window.

Von Roenn applied this thinking to his next project.

The Wells house was built from old log cabin parts that they had been collecting over the years.

>> Our client had purchased an antique glass door.

Her original thought was that the door would go away and we would replace the door.

But I d realized that it was really nice to have something that had an antique quality to it and then we just referenced that.

>> The leadlines in the design echo the lines and angles in the antique door panel, and the clear, textured glass brings in the colors from outside.

>> The emphasis of the leadline as being the primary element, and the glass becoming a secondary element, really became a part of my vocabulary.

>> As the studio began to grow, he hired two designers, Julia Wirick and Donald Thomas, to assist with new commissions.

Meanwhile, von Roenn reached out to Sowers for advice and support.

>> Bob Sowers was continuing to help me to understand and learn more about architecture.

He was instrumental in helping to plan for the Europe trip in 74 >> Von Roenn was becoming interested in architecture because of the way the Germans related their work to the buildings.

The writings of Rudolf Arnheim, in particular, were an inspiration to him.

The Dean of the School of Architecture, at the University of Kentucky, invited him to teach a weekly class on Art and Architecture and he encouraged him to move into architecture as a profession.

Architecture was changing dramatically in modern times but stained glass really wasn t. >> Stained glass really did not fit contemporary architecture especially well for a number of reasons.

One, it s extremely expensive.

Secondly, there s a limitation in how large you can build something.

It has absolutely no thermal efficiency.

You have to have specialized framing to accommodate another pane of glass to provide protection for it.

It is inherently weak the lead stretches over time from heat.

The weight of it bows, and it needs to be restored.

Deciding >> on a change of direction, von Roenn resigned his position at the studio, and moved his young family to New Haven so he could pursue a Master s Degree in Architecture at Yale University.

>> Leaving the studio was difficult it was very scary.

We had become pretty well established.

And to walk away from that..

The Yale experience was probably the greatest of my whole career.

It changed my whole perspective about the way you approach architecture.

>> His class at Yale had a building project for the American Shakespeare theater in Stratford, Connecticut and von Roenn proposed replacing some windows there with leaded glass.

>> I had a small group of guys.

One of those was Turan Duda.

Turan and I had become very good friends and I began to teach Turan about glass - how glass shapes light.

That became part of his understanding and now, as a very successful architect, he looks at glass differently because of those three months that we spent together.

>> Von Roenn also struck up a friendship with Cesar Pelli who was Dean at the time.

Pelli was very supportive of the paper that von Roenn worked on which was titled The Primary Modalities of Art s Relationship with Architecture: Integration, Juxtaposition and Synthesis .

As outlined in the paper, Integrated art is where the architecture provides the context necessary for the inclusion of art into the architectural fabric, and the art is designed to be harmoniously coordinated with the architecture.

Wall paintings and sculptural additions to Gothic cathedrals can also be considered Integrated Art.

The important criteria in Juxtaposed Art is that it is to be perceived as an independent work in a setting determined by the architecture, which is itself whole and complete without the art.

Exterior sculptures fit this category as they are not part of the architecture, but exist in a kind of dialogue with it.

>> I think you have to have there not be a clash, but some kind of a conversation that goes on between the art and the architecture.

>> In Synthesis, there is no distinction between the art and the architecture.

The architecture itself is the art.

A complete unified creative work.

Buildings that fit this description are Corbusier s Chapel at Ronchamp, Frank Lloyd Wright s Guggenheim Museum, and Frank Gehry s Disney Concert Hall.

While at graduate school, von Roenn received a commission for windows at Clyde s restaurant in Vienna, Virginia so he took a year s leave of absence to work on the project.

One night, with most of the windows complete, he left for home in the small hours, and the studio fireplace burned the studio down.

He lost the windows, the designs, and many of the books he had collected over the years.

>> I couldn t get another year off of school and so we had to hire the studio back in Louisville to refabricate the project but I had to redesign it.

When I redesigned the windows, I took a completely different approach and the gestures became very sweeping.

They were gestures that related to a full body.

>> In his last year at Yale, he received a commission to do a series of windows in a new contemporary home designed by two of his professors.

The design was developed in response to the building s relationship to a nearby stream.

The stream was one of the most prominent features of the site and helped to define the identity of the building.

Instead of having a separate design for each window, the lines flow across all windows as if allowing glimpses into a larger picture.

Von Roenn was now looking at projects both as an architect and as a glass artist.

The two professions reinforced each other and melded into one.

In 1983, von Roenn returned to Louisville and worked for a while as an architect.

He eventually moved back to working with architectural glass full time.

He also began diving again, continuing to chase his boyhood dream of a world championship.

Leaded glass was still all he knew but he began to push its limits.

His first truly innovative project was a new window for the Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville.

All of the existing windows in the sanctuary were traditional figure windows and many of them were from Tiffany Studios.

von Roenn wanted the new window to be more reflective of contemporary issues and a hot topic in the mid-eighties was the role of women in the church.

I >> began thinking about how to convey femininity and masculinity and I made a prototype study panel with two figures that would be seen differently during the day and at night.

>> He photographed a Gothic sculpture figure and silkscreened it onto glass with black paint.

The paint blocked light coming through the window and the figure of a man could be shown in relief.

In front of that male figure was a female dancer silkscreened in white so as to reflect interior light at night while the male figure faded into the darkness of the background.

>> And to me, the duality of male-female, stone-flesh, night-day, static-fluid, were the natural dualities of all of life.

>> At our best, we are trying to inspire people.

Leave them with something that lifts them up and broadens them in some way.

That would be part of what the challenge is trying to leave something that is more than you.

>> As it turned out, the bishop retired, the new bishop was a woman, and it seemed fitting that she was the one to dedicate the window.

Architect Bill Turnbull organized this building around a central atrium space that was filled with natural light.

He did not want to be able to see into offices or see blinds or post-it notes on the glass.

In preparation for thinking about glass designs, Turnbull took von Roenn to visit the Hallidie Building in downtown San Francisco.

The building was one of the first American buildings to feature an external wall of glass.

The style is now known as a curtain wall and has since become widespread.

Turnbull liked how the fire escape balconies feature as a decorative element.

The wrought iron pattern, merging with its reflection on the glass, became the starting point for von Roenn s design ideas at Mountain View.

He incorporated lithographic imagery from wrought iron work that he found in nineteenth century catalogs.

>> In keeping with Bill Turnbull s whimsical approach to things, I took profile moldings - of crown moldings but then played them one against the other.

That idea of working with a reference to another building was my way of adding a commentary to it.

>> Similar patterns were used in the composition of the skylight so as to create a unified ensemble.

The skylight is made of laminated glass panels containing a printed film which casts patterns and colors down into the atrium space.

In 1989, von Roenn was also focusing on preparation for the World Masters Championships in Denmark, where, at age 41, he won two events and set two world records.

>> I finally had accomplished my goal as a very young boy.

You know, I always wanted to be a world champion.

>> The Abbey of Gethsemane is a Trappist order.

The Trappists had evolved from the Cistercians.

The founder of the Cistercians had developed a series of geometric patterns which were used for ornamentation.

Von Roenn used the Cistercian patterns as a fundamental element of his compositions to reference the tradition.

In the sanctuary window, the Cistercian pattern is a pale uninterrupted background.

In front of that there is a layer of transparent blue forms through which the Cistercian patterns can be seen.

This was to show that, as a new order evolves, the old order begins to dissolve, and that the old influences the new.

The theme of the Chapel windows is that the old and new co-exist as a new entity.

These windows featured the use of laminated glass bevels a technique von Roenn was starting to explore.

Lamination also featured more boldly in the design of this pair of large glass doors.

The panels are composed of leaded beveled glass with laminated prismatic glass lenses.

In 1991, von Roenn purchased the Louisville Art Glass studio.

He restructured it, and renamed it Architectural Glass Art to emphasize the new focus on architectural projects.

One of their first projects was the façade of a local jazz club.

>> The purpose was to express something that embodied the general nature of jazz.

I knew immediately that I couldn t work with lead.

I felt that lead was too heavy too structured.

>> Handmade bevels were laminated onto the exterior of partially sandblasted window glass.

Their reflective prismatic qualities create a shimmering appearance on the glass surface.

This was von Roenn s first commission to be completely free of the lead line.

>> We went down to Orlando with our children who were young teenagers at time.

And we went to all of the theme parks.

By the time I went in to the meeting I was just totally overwhelmed.

>> I told the committee What you need here is not a chapel.

You need an oasis- to get away from all that stuff!

>> Von Roenn s concept for The Queen of the Universe chapel, depicts the universe in saturated blue colors.

The cool blue color blocks out the outside world while at the same time suggesting the wide openness of the night sky.

The narthex wall design features rolling waves that represent a re-enactment of the rite of baptism.

By this time the studio had perfected the lamination process, once again building the glass panels without using lead.

However, it was a real challenge to get the large curved bevels to fit together precisely with no spaces between them.

The final project for the building was the creation of a prismatic cross hanging behind a suspended crucifixion sculpture.

>> There are other ways of developing solutions that go beyond lead and the composition becomes better because lead is not in there.

It opened up the doors to all kinds of stuff.

We got really good at lamination.

>> My sights really were beyond stained glass.

>> Diving and architecture had heightened von Roenn s perception of 3 -dimensional space.

Architecture is all about the relationships of building components and spaces.

These thoughts had long been part of von Roenn s mindset and were now starting to influence his approach to glass.

The free-standing Fisher sculpture sits beside external windows and underneath a skylight.

Dichroic glass has a thin metallic film on the surface and the transmitted colors are different to the reflected colors.

Dichroic glass also can reflect different colors from different angles an effect von Roenn used in many later projects.

This sculpture, being lit from two directions, changes its appearance throughout the day and is especially dramatic when lit by the late afternoon sun.

It is a great example of his concept of Juxtaposition - a work of art that stands apart from the architecture but exists in a relationship to it.

The next 3 dimensional commission was a huge glass and metal construction on top of a skyscraper.

The Three Wells Fargo bank was originally built as the Three First Union bank.

The Chairman of Three First Union wanted to match his rival bank, the Bank of America, which had just opened their new headquarters nearby in Charlotte.

He wanted a visual presence that equaled or surpassed that of Bank of America, and asked that his new skyscraper have a glistening crown to claim the position as the queen of Charlotte, a town that is known as the Queen City.

von Roenn designed tall fins of laminated dichroic glass so that the crown of the building would sparkle in different colors throughout the day.

He worked with the engineers of the building to redesign the structure of the building so it could support the five hundred and fifty thousand pound installation.

The studio members took great pride in the completion of this difficult and complex project.

>> There s just supreme confidence, within the studio, that we could tackle anything.

>> With his whole team he is able to let go of some of the preciousness of what he started with and then, through this collaborative effort, something even greater forms.

>> The aspect of work that I like the most is working with other people.

>> In 2001 AGA moved into a mixed-use development in downtown Louisville.

The eight story building was renamed GlassWorks.

The 200,000 square foot building housed AGA s studios, plus glass blowing and flameworking studios, two glass galleries, a jazz club, and apartments for lease on the upper floors.

The creativity and energy around the center attracted 130,000 visitors a year and the collaborative atmosphere encouraged artists to explore new ways of working with glass.

>> I learned the value of having other people involved in the process.

Because it allowed us to do much more because we could take the expertise from other people and incorporate it into what we were doing.

>> Dye sublimation was a new technique that was used on these large altar windows.

It involves vaporizing color into polyester films which are then laminated between two sheets of glass.

The church was interested in a theme for the windows that related to the foundation of the Lutheran Church.

Martin Luther s written texts were used as the primary element of the composition and they were translated into 110 different languages.

>> There are other ways of developing solutions that go beyond lead.

>> In 2003, von Roenn curated an exhibition featuring architectural installations, concept pieces, and original stained glass works by fourteen artists from the United States, Germany, Spain, and Canada.

The exhibition ran for three months and was part of a larger effort to educate the public about creative directions in glass in the new millennium.

The Jewish Medical Center was designed with a three story entrance foyer that has a large window facing the road.

>> The perfect location for a piece of jewelry architectural jewelry.

I also wanted it to feel as though it was organic, that it was a flower that was unfolding.

>> The studio developed some new techniques for fusing and slumping dichroic glass.

The main difficulty was in connecting these forms so they looked like they were floating in the air.

The team were very conscious that they were suspending glass above people s heads and that the methods of construction needed to be solid and safe.

The leaf forms were wrapped with a perimeter of zinc and, inside the zinc channel, the team ran braided stainless steel aircraft cable which was mechanically attached to the primary structure.

This is an example of internal juxtaposition as the sculpture relates to the architecture but is not an integral part of it.

>> From all the things that we learned, we then began doing many more suspended sculptures.

MCCarren Airport was a result of that.

>> The sculpture alludes to airiness and flight.

It also relates to the fable of Dedaulus who had wings of wax and flew too close to the sun.

In this design the circular oculus represents the sun.

Imagery from the research labs at Missouri University was incorporated into the designs.

These images are changed every 10 years and are funded from an investment fund that was set up as part of the commission fee.

>> There is a central stainless-steel spline, >> with tapered ends, from which stainless steel cables are connected to two columns diagonally across the lobby.

Along that spline are three rings and the three rings represent the three components of the facility.

>> The City decided they didn t want a Pedway there are too many unless we made it artistic and we divided the business end of Main street to the artistic art piece of Main Street.

>> We built a model.

We developed some designs.

Once it was designed, we then had to collaborate with metal fabricators, with engineers, with a contractor, and the architect of record.

There was a lot of concern about our design and its compatibility with the nineteenth century buildings along Main Street.

The Pedway design >> references Louisville s many bridges over the Ohio river which are symbols of the area s history.

The Fountain Square project is more of a façade decoration than an actual window.

It is a cameo of the Goddess of Water who is featured in the sculpture inside the plaza s central fountain.

>> The casting was laminated onto these flat panels.

Some areas of the casting were as much as five inches thick so the annealing time for each of the panels was the equivalent of a week.

>> The panels are attached to a system of tightened stainless steel rods.

The mounting hardware was attached to holes which were drilled into the clear base sheet glass and the opal cast glass was laminated on top of it.

>> Having the opportunity of working with other disciplines was a chance to play with things that we had not played with before.

Some of the children that are there are physically impaired and many are terminally ill.

The area that they had asked us to do glass for was used for funerals of children who had died in the orphanage.

I wanted to create something that had a sense of vitality, and life, and movement, so that, in the midst of their grief, the kids would have a sense of something of a life that continued.

The theme was about wind moving through a grass.

As they walk down the hallway, these three-dimensional blown glass forms are just a little bit above their eye level, looking in to a gallery.

From what we had learned from Kentucky Museum of Art and Design, we then applied to Kentucky Artisans Center.

In this project I incorporated textured glass, some of it with iridescent coatings, to help to kind of shape that view through that.

As you move toward and around it you see these dimensional forms interacting with one another.

Al >> Held was an American Abstract expressionist painter who was well known for his large scale hard-edged paintings.

Many of Held's artworks include symmetric non-objective structures in vivid colors.

Von Roenn was invited to work with Held in translating one of the designs into a huge window for the new Orlando Courthouse.

The perspective of the shapes creates a sense of deep space but the different vanishing points confuse their relationships.

The window is 50 feet tall and 20 feet wide.

The colored glass was hand blown in Germany and then shipped to China where it was cut by water jets.

>> The craftmanship was just superb it was amazing.

And the cost, there s was no way that we could have done that in the United States.

>> While they were working on the design, they were asked to provide a proposal for five smaller windows each twelve feet tall and five feet wide.

Ray Hunt is the chairman of Hunt Consolidated and oversaw the construction of their new company building in Dallas.

He was intrigued by the cosmos and had the ceiling of the employee dining room feature a map of the night sky as it was on the day that his father established the oil company.

He also contacted von Roenn to research a possible feature wall in the room.

>> I developed a free-standing stage set, almost, and we installed suspended glass panels that were absolutely filled with glass jewels in a Fibonacci spiral.

Our glass was really intended as almost like a scrim and that the real event were these colored projections from the L.E.D.

lights that were projected onto the glass.

>> We used very high intensity L.E.D fixtures which blast the light primarily from the side.

We did bring in an international programmer who sat with me for three days and we programmed these different lighting looks into the computer.

>> The Muhammed Ali Center is an eighty million dollar building in Ali s hometown of Louisville.

The landscape includes a waterway that leads to a fountain.

>> We had built these glass columns, and ran silicone between the joints, and then we had these rods crossing to hold the glass panels together.

The first one that we installed to test water just blows out.

We had to put stainless steel corners on all of the glass, and then put the rods back in, and it worked, it didn t leak, water came flowing over.

It was such a complicated system, you know, between the lights, and the water, and then we had to inject air into this water, in a method, around the lights, without interrupting the lights.

>> The system of tubes, wires, pumps, circuit boards, and lights was difficult to maintain.

But there was no maintenance plan for the fountain and it eventually fell into disrepair.

>> You don t have control over everything and, once you walk away from a project, nothing you can do.

>> The idea of Duke Cancer Center was that you and your loved ones have just been told that one of your family members has cancer.

This is the place for you to go, be with your family, it s really a place of contemplation.

>> Our glass feature is in the center of the room and the seating is circular and is oriented toward this central element.

>> And each of these seats is not just a bench, but it has a back to it that embraces you.

>> The central glass form is composed of stacks of plate glass and the top surface is cast glass with a texture like that of rippling water.

Small glass jewels were laminated to the underside, creating the appearance of drops of water on the surface.

The work is illuminated internally with LED lights.

>> The color cycle is the seven colors of a Chakra.

Story >> is fine.

Narrative s fine, but then, you know, the things that really shift our experience, and create more joy, are the primal things like color and light.

>> The blue and the green light up differently and create the illusion of something happening inside that pool of water.

>> The users can actually choose which particular program they d like to use for that particular day at that particular time.

And so it becomes interactive in that way.

>> After the first six months, the director of the space said We have as many nurses and doctors using the space as we have patients.

>> The Terminus skyscraper is one of several buildings surrounding an interior courtyard from which its lobby is entered.

The owners wanted a mural on the walls of the entryway to somehow depict the history of Atlanta in a pictorial form.

von Roenn s team built some small scale models to try out different ideas.

They decided on three wall sculptures.

>> We included the story of the development of Atlanta but not in a way where it became just a literal depiction.

>> The moment you become literal it becomes a poster.

It no longer is something that engages you in a way that makes you curious or makes you wonder.

>> What I thought was more interesting was to have that story as a background but, in front of that, have these dynamic sculptural forms >> that are more prominent than the imagery behind.

>> The sculptural elements are stainless steel forms that reference the triangular skylights of the courtyard roof.

This was to relate the artwork to the architecture as well as to the city and its history.

>> It fractures and it breaks up the imagery in such a way that I don t immediately see it, but the second and third time I look, I begin to see a recognizable image, a recognizable building .

>> The bands of holographic and dichroic acrylic change colors and represent the idea that, from the city s history, a new and dynamic energy is emerging.

>> It s so much more than just a design that you start out with.

All of the structural parts of it are engineered within the methodical part.

That has to take place afterwards, not losing the original spark that you had.

That s not always easy to do.

>> Von Roenn was already working on another commission for wall art, this time for a Chicago couple.

>> They have a condominium, on the twenty sixth floor, and the window overlooks Millennium Park.

In Millenium Park is a bandshell designed by Frank Gehry.

You also see Crown Fountain that was designed by Jaume Plenza.

And Anish Kapoor s Cloudgate, also called The Bean, was just sitting on the plaza just glistening in the sun.

And the first time I saw this view it literally just almost took my breath away.

I almost expected to see fireworks it was so dramatic.

That idea of fireworks got stuck, that little seed.

>> Von Roenn s eventual solution was a mural eighty four inches wide by thirty two inches high.

It is full of radiating shards that are laminated to the surface a two inch base of cast glass.

The cast glass is mirrored on the reverse side allowing reflected light to bring it alive.

>> I found a great photograph of Susan and Tony sitting under the piece, after we installed it, and they re just brimming.

>> The Chicago Theological Seminary was established in 1855.

The faculty and students had always been proactive on social issues.

They had participated in the abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights Movement.

In 2010, the University built a new facility for them.

Von Roenn was commissioned to design elements of the entry lobby.

He used a theme of water to unify the lobby experience.

The mural is a 28 foot long, free-standing glass structure composed of eight curved panels of glass.

>> We designed a flowing form of almost like water, along this whole thing in blue glass frit that was fired permanently onto the surface of the glass.

>> Along the mural there are twenty images of people who, from the founding of the Seminary to the present, have been positive influences on social justice.

>> It s beyond a wall of glass but part of a space.

He learned that when he studied architecture.

You know, how to utilize or how to envision space.

>> The entry into the chapel was defined by both sides of a Gothic arch.

>> We had water down both surfaces into a pool with a glass bridge.

The theme of this was that, >> as you enter the chapel, you walk under this arch that has water flowing on it, that you are purifying yourself as you go into this sacred space.

We learned so much in just figuring out how to build those things.

>> Von Roenn s second pedestrian walkway used some of the techniques created for the Chicago Seminary.

The walkway is ninety feet long, twelve feet wide, and fifteen feet tall.

The glass arches are made of tempered and laminated glass and contain dichroic and holographic films to scatter reflected light.

>> I designed it so that the art element was actually also the structural element.

Each truss >> is made in four parts two legs and two arches.

Where they join there are gusset plates bolted to both sides.

The whole construction also had to allow for expansion and contraction as the stadium building moved at a different rate than the carpark building.

>> So we developed this detail that allowed the bolt to go through but we still had freedom of movement.

He put a >> lighting system at the base of the pedway so that when UFL is playing it s all red.

When UFK is playing it s all blue.

It has movement and color - it just makes it exciting.

>> There are two primary elements to the Norton Cancer Center window design one geometric and the other organic.

The geometric components are the large orange brackets which frame the design and the primary organic component is a large tree.

The room was created for quiet contemplation and includes a labyrinth on the floor for walking meditation.

>> Throughout the entire field is a spiral that s created by ground glass prisms.

We drilled holes in the antique glass and then we inlaid these jewels inside these holes to create the spiral.

>> At night, the glass superstructure is kind of a big dark hole.

They wanted that glass to speak to people outside of the building so I was hired to bring that wall to life.

There are eight wash lights that light the entire piece of glass and then there s some profile fixtures which we use to accentuate different parts of the glass.

There s a large ruby-red cross.

You can get shutters that come in inside the fixture and cut the light off.

So we had one fixture cut vertically and then we had other fixtures, two of them, and we cut those horizontally.

>> One of the things that bothered me about the design of the building was it was not a completely resolved composition.

I felt as though, from one end to the other end, that movement was not especially well composed, and in the center of that was our window.

Rather than trying to reference what wasn t working we had to establish something that would hold its own.

>> Sometimes I find that finding the counterpoint is better than trying to find the commonality.

>> The city of Almaty is the major commercial, financial, and cultural center of Kazakhstan, with a population of over two million.

Clouds cling to the base of the mountains, and cable cars pass through them on the way to and from the city.

The concept of passing through clouds became the visual theme of the project for the escalator atrium at the SAKS 5th Avenue store in Almaty.

Riders on the escalators move along above or below the suspended cloud formations which are composed of crystal jewels and LED lights suspended on cables.

>> When you approach a hospital, how do you reduce the stress?

How do you create positive distractions?

And so what we did is we created a very -almost like a small building scaled for children.

So as a child comes to the building you want it to be fun and playful introduce colored glass there trying to reduce the stress as you re coming in.

The big idea for the architecture was this idea of playfulness a kaleidoscope of ever-changing light.

The senior leadership of the hospital they really wanted something that they coined as sophisticated whimsy .

So they didn t want it to be too childreny with giraffes and things and everything, but they wanted to have a level of sophistication but at the same time have some whimsy to it.

So I created this simplistic diagram of colored glass on this cube and then I said Well I ve got to call Kenn.

He s going to be perfect for this.

Being an architect himself, he understood exactly what we were trying to achieve.

His initial proposal, it was very angular but Kenn shift quickly, with no issue, and then came up with something that had more curvilinear shapes to it.

You re approaching the building and you re going I see something but I don t really know what it is.

You get a little closer and the color starts to reveal itself, and then when you get really close to it, and you look at it from an oblique view, it just comes alive.

And, at the same time, it s not just about what s on the outside of the building, it s about what s inside the building.

So if you re in a patient room, and it has some of this dichroic glass that s on the exterior of the building, and when the sunlight hits it at different times of the day, it penetrates into the building.

So it creates these moments throughout the day that give that positive distraction.

It s not about letting go of your idea, it s letting your idea flourish.

And that s why working with Kenn is perfect because he completely understands that it has to be a dance, a collaborative dance, to uncover those beautiful moments where architecture and art meet each other.

>> Soon after the installation of the San Francisco project, von Roenn was contacted about a similar project for a new hospital in San Diego.

The designs were similar in type and technique to those at San Francisco but the imagery and color palette were different.

Because of the hospital s proximity to the ocean, the image forms were more fluid, which also related to the moving traffic on the adjacent roadway.

The glass shows a wide range of colors depending on whether light is being transmitted, reflected, or a combination of both.

>> What is Austin known for?

It s really known for the river.

The Colorado river runs through the city is one of its trademarks.

I said Wouldn t it be wonderful if we could, in some way, symbolically and lyrically, depict water?

>> We knew some of the qualities and characteristics that could be associated with water.

Movement, flowing down, verticality, looking through the water and seeing something behind.

We could create something that evokes water almost a waterfall.

>> This entire wall of glass appears to be like the river.

Something still felt like it was missing.

And I said You know Kenn, when you have a waterfall, somewhere you are going to find bubbles and there s going to be turbulence and Kenn said I ve got just the thing.

So he took these over a thousand little beads of glass and he started applying them to the surface and it gave that movement, it gave that turbulence to the water.

If you think about walking along the edge of a river, you see the surface ripple but you also see through to the bottom.

You see objects that are floating by.

You see something swimming a little sliver of color.

>> And we actually painted very thin strips of wood and nailed them on the back wall ... >> to create that illusion of elements that are close to the surface of the water and deep in the river bed.

>> The texture of the glass reshaped and fractured those colored forms.

And as you moved, that fracturing changed and created an animation within that red or orange that you would not have recognized if it had just been a solid wall.

>> Mermaids are the theme of this floor to ceiling sculpture in Manila.

It was named Siren s Waterfall as a reference to mythical sirens who enticed sailors onto rocky shores.

It features stylized female forms floating around a central core of lighting strands.

The work is really more about the lighting than the glass and von Roenn s role was to develop glass that could pull changing color patterns from the L.E.D.

lights.

>> We used cast glass and we had it fabricated in Shanghai with a company that we had been working with for almost twenty years.

>> Around the base of the sculpture there is a bank of digital screens which display images of mermaids along a shoreline.

>> Even though we were at a long distance, we actually felt we had control throughout the entire process just because of the team that had been assembled.

>> Declaration is a sculpture that sits in the center of a roundabout less than a block away from the Florida State Football Stadium in Tallahassee.

It was built to serve as the identity piece for a newly redeveloped accommodation and café scene called College Town.

The inverted cone shape was originally designed to give good visibility to motorists on the roundabout.

Looking at his early drawings, von Roenn noted that the shape looks like a spearhead, and he immediately realized a symbolic connection to the university.

>> In Florida State Football, a Seminole Indian rides out on a horse with a spear that is flaming and he throws the spear into the ground as to declare This is our territory.

I took that spear shape and made it geometric and circular, and then the light beam extended up fifty thousand feet as though that was part of the spear that was coming down.

>> There are thirteen fixtures in the concrete and then there s one fixture in the center of the spiral at the top - three feet in diameter sort of like a giant searchlight.

>> My hope was that it was not so literal that you could only see it as a spear.

>> The central element of the Belmont University Chapel is an illuminated rosette behind the altar.

LED lights are located along the perimeter of the rosette and are focused on the dichroic elements of the composition.

The side windows were designed to allow more natural light into the space.

The design echoes the shape of the windows and parts of the lower sections are frosted to provide some privacy.

The glass roof over the new library at Kenyon College was done in collaboration with glass artist David Wilson, who designed the project.

Von Roenn s role was to develop a method of production and then coordinate with the contractors on the installation.

The insulated glass panels are composed of digitally printed glass and laminated dichroic glass in multiple colors.

The digital printing provides a shading effect and the dichroic glass elements cast colors throughout the library.

The president of the university liked the University Chapel windows so much that he asked for a similar effect in these three huge windows that open into the central lobby at the Performing Arts Center.

The lobby is not just a transitional area but is also used as a meeting place for a variety of events.

Von Roenn worked on a design that would integrate softly with the classical architecture.

>> We had these very large prisms hand-made in China and some of them are as large as ten inches by sixteen inches.

All hand polished beautifully produced.

>> He s using these materials that grab the light and then pull it into the space in ways that make the space dynamic because the sun s always moving.

>> Those three windows face absolutely due west and, in late afternoon, the light that comes in from that lobby transforms everything with these spectral colors.