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Snarkitecture swings for the fences with All-Star Game installation

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Snarkitecture swings for the fences with All-Star Game installation

A forest of baseball bats was installed for Field. (Courtesy Snarkitecture)

The 2018 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Washington, D.C. may have already passed, but the MLB Assembly, a weeklong collection of art, architecture, fashion, and food projects centered around baseball, is worth revisiting.

New York-based Snarkitecture contributed to the Assembly, which ran from July 13 through July 16, with their Field installation. Visitors to the Wharf’s District Pier were greeted with a rising forest of baseball bats supported on white plinths and arranged into four diamonds that referenced the layout of a baseball field.

The bats and billets were arranged to resemble a baseball field. (Courtesy Snarkitecture)

At the beginning of Field’s four-day installation, 1,100 baseball bats were mingled with 200 billets, or unfinished raw wood cylinders. A woodturner was stationed in a booth behind the installation and using a lathe, they converted the billets into fresh bats. The project was envisioned as an interactive exhibition, where visitors would enter the rising arrangement of baseball bats and uncover the performance on the other side.

The bats were emblazoned with the classic Louisville Slugger logo. (Courtesy Snarkitecture)

Field was constantly evolving and on the last day of the exhibition, the billets had all been swapped out for finished bats.

Field was not the only immersive Snarkitecture installation available to those in D.C. Fun House, the sprawling 10-year retrospective of the firm’s work, is on display in the lobby of the National Building Museum for the rest of the summer, and the same sense of spontaneity brought to Field permeates that show.

A woodturner using a lathe to carve a baseball bat. (Courtesy Snarkitecture)

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