The Spring Auction for St. Philip's School in Noe Valley, San Francisco was held at St. Mary's Cathedral in the Patron's Hall. The challenge of this event is that the hall is enormous measuring 135 ft. by 70 ft. and the expected audience of 300 would seem a bit dwarfed by the venue. The solution was to fill the space with massive tensile structures that both broke up the space and filled volume at the scal appropriate to the room. Using PVC and interlock synthetic knit, a crew of dedicated volunteers fabricated both stretch shape funnels to descend from the ceiling as well as massively oversize flowers to frame the stage.

Complicating matters were the fact that the venue has exacly zero attachment points for any kind of scenery. This meant that friction-held attachment points had to be introduced. Using ratcheting trucking straps we were able to create points with a pull strength of 400 lbs each at the top of each of the 10 columns lining the walls. These points served as terminii of gy wires holding the central posts of the funnels in place as well as posts from spot lighting and projectors for projecting onto the funnels.