What do you get when you give a lot of free white spandex to design students at Cornell University? Five months of negotiations with the city of Ithaca, and then a complex array of abstract illuminated fabric sculptures suspended 17 feet over Ithaca City Hall Plaza until May 21.

The project, called LightPassage, started with an assignment for students to collaborate in two fall courses to design and fabricate constructed projects using electric lighting as a delineator of spatial experience. The two courses are Design and Environmental Analysis (DEA) 201, sophomore design studio taught by Jan Jennings, and Theatre Arts 362, a junior theater lighting course taught by senior lecturer and resident lighting designer Ed Intemann.

"The two studios investigated the conditions of light and spatial experience at two different scales, as they are defined by each discipline. The discourse results in issues of scale, design analysis and conception, as well as design development and fabrication/installation," says Jennings, associate professor of DEA. But snags with the city's engineers didn't allow the installation to occur in the fall.

As a result, the majority of the design students from the fall course enrolled in Jennings' spring directed-reading course on lighting research. And they kept working on negotiations to get three of the final projects installed downtown.

"Originally the designs were to be fabricated of spandex and cable, but the tensile strength of the cable would have put too much stress on the façade of the City Hall building," Jennings explains. "Thus, we retained Peter Novelli, a local engineer, to make the calculations regarding the rigging materials and installation design." The process took five months and numerous collaborative meetings with Gary Ferguson, director of the Ithaca Downtown Partnership; Bill Gray, the city engineer; Jim Crandell, the city electrician, Thys Van Cort and JoAnn Cornish of the city planning and development department, Mayor Alan J. Cohen and members of the Commission for Art and Design in Public Places.

"This was not only a way to get the arts into the community, but the collaborative effort between the city and the students was equally important," says Cornish, who worked closely with the Cornell group.

"It was quite valuable seeing what it took to start from a concept and then follow it through to the production of an installed piece. And it was very interesting to deal with the process of selling an idea to the city and to see what types of issues are involved when working with a client," says student project manager, Cathy Emilian of Ithaca, a sophomore majoring in design.

In addition to the Cornell Council for the Arts, in association with the Ithaca Downtown Partnership, sponsors of LightPassage included Cornell's College of Human Ecology and Department of Design and Environmental Analysis. Biflex International, Moonachie, N.J., donated 80 yards of spandex.