Alek Turkmen

Queens Sculpture

January 2024 | MacDonald Park, Forest Hills | Unveiling Spring 2025

Cold emailing might be my favorite hobby.

I've met a lot of interesting people through it, and one of them is Larry Ng. Larry is a Cooper Union alumnus I reached out to after hacking into my college’s alumni database. *cough* *cough* What I meant to say was, I met Larry using the alumni database that Cooper Union graciously provided me so that I could expand my professional network.

Well so anyways, Larry and I connected and we set up a virtual meeting. About halfway through the meeting, Larry mentioned commissioning a sculpture that spelled out “Queens” to be placed in MacDonald Park in Forest Hills.

Here's how our conversation went, more or less:

[Larry] “...and it's a 6ft tall sculpture for Queens”
[Alek] "How are you going to fund this project?"
[Larry] (without hesitation) "Don't worry about that, Alek, my pockets run deep."
[Alek] "Ok, but to put a statue in a park, you need to go through tons of NYC Park approvals."
[Larry] (just as confidently) "Don't worry, Alek, I have an inside guy."
[Alek] “So how can I help?”
[Larry] (smiling), “I need a 3D designer to bring this to life, of course you have full creative freedom.”
[Alek] “I’ll do it.”

So I got straight to work, and initially I created my first rendition of the design in Revit. For those not familiar, it’s an architectural/engineering prioritized CADing software that offers a great rendering tool to present 3D engineering concepts to audiences.

I realized Fusion360 was a little easier for me and my workflow so I made the second and final renditions there. The picture to the right is an HDR from Google Maps with the sculpture rendered into view.

As a visualization tool to help with the approval process, I 3D printed a miniature replica that is 25 times smaller than the planned sculpture. Fun fact: it’s 1,350 times smaller volumetrically than the real thing.

And to catch you up to where we are as of writing this, the designs have been sent over to WhiteClouds, a third party company that specializes in outdoor sculptures. The dimensions of the statue will be approximately 6 ft high x 22 ft wide x 1.5 ft deep and weigh in at almost 2 tons.

Official unveiling is on schedule for Spring 2025, a combination of more favorable weather conditions, NYC parks approval process, and donor campaigning led us to this final date.

If this project resonates with you and you're interested in donating or volunteering please reach out to either myself or Larry.