Nikolas Weinstein

Nikolas Weinstein was born in 1968 in New York City to parents who both had artistic careers. His father, Richard S. Weinstein, worked in urban planning for New York City before moving to Los Angeles to become dean of the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. His mother was a sculptor. He also studied at Université de Nantes & École des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France Before glass blowing, Weinstein worked briefly in a stained glass shop in Brooklyn, New York. Later, Weinstein took lessons at a glassblowing shop in Manhattan's Little Italy neighborhood and became interested in the “smoke and fire” of the trade. Upon returning to Brown, he used extra time in his last semester to enroll in a glassblowing course at Rhode Island School of Design, after which he states he “was hooked.” After graduation, Weinstein moved to San Francisco and worked as a graphic designer while continuing to blow glass in his free time. He managed to get some of his glassblowing work into a few small design shops. Weinstein's style of glassblowing builds on nature, shapes, and movement, which interested him from an early age via internships at the NY American Museum of Natural History and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. == Career ==

Weinstein's studio opened in 1991. Weinstein, whose designs focus on light, shapes, and movement describes glassblowing as a “team sport” and has 10 to 12 people working on each project, along with an engineer to analyze the stresses on the sculpture and calculate the amount of glass required. In an interview with GLASS Quarterly, Weinstein stated that all his pieces are in “response to their surrounding architecture” and that [he] “always wanted pieces that were big enough that they would be considered as much an element in a building as the foundation or the façade.” == Notable works ==

The Pariser Platz Chandelier: DZ Bank Building, Germany Commissioned in 1996 by architect Frank O. Gehry, To create the sculpture, which filters a mix of sunlight and artificial light, Weinstein enlisted an expert team including a man who designed windows for the space shuttle, a builder of mirrors for the Hubble Space Telescope, and a physicist who models random processes. Bar Agricole, San Francisco, CA Skylights in a cocktail lounge in the San Francisco Bay area, fitted with glass sculptural “curtains” made to resemble fabric blowing in the wind, transform a formerly-abandoned warehouse space into a posh “modern urban tavern.” Listed as “the best restaurant sculpture”, the Bar Agricole artwork was designed to withstand earthquake forces over 1G. The glass curtains contribute to the building's eco-attributes by amplifying the natural light throughout the space. The sculpture is 8.8 feet wide, 53.6 feet long, and 8.4 feet high and is made of nearly 60,000 individual glass tubes. The total length of the sculpture laid end-to-end is over 11 kilometers. At 164 feet long, 39 feet wide, and 43 feet tall, it was the largest installation Weinstein completed. == Awards ==

• 2012: San Francisco Department of Commerce: Export Achievement Award, Supporting Innovation and Exports in the Bay Area. • 2013: 33rd Annual Gold Key Awards for Excellence in Hospitality Design: Hospitality Design Award for sculptural glass installation, Courtyard by Marriot, Hong Kong Shat Tin. == Sources ==