The Yonkers Business Week awardees are: Laurel Porcari

An architect with a master's degree of fine arts in glass sculpture, Laurel Porcari works mostly in architectural glass designs. She teaches at Tulane University's Architecture School and Glass Sculpture Studio in New Orleans. Porcari operates NOKO Studio for architectural kiln-formed glass and fine

Laurel Porcari is a New Orleans-based glass sculptor working for Tulane University.

She studied the art form at Pilchuck Glass School, founded by pre-eminent glass, artist Dale Chihuly.

Her design is composed of an undulating pattern of laminated glass cut by water jets and resembles fins. For her proposed installation, the tallest fin would be 12 feet tall.

Each one is made of three layers of quarter-inch glass, which, are then laminated together. The lamination process would make it a safety glass; the end result being a 4-inch thiek piece with an interlayer of laminated material.

"The interlayer is so beefy that you'd have to shoot it with a bazooka to do any damage," Porcari said. "It is very durable glass."

Her design of the piece was derived from both the natural, urban and temporal geography of the area.

'When you look east the smooth edge mimics the city," said Porcari. "The west mimics the cliffs (of the Palisades)."

For Porcari, the piece condenses two conditions into one volume.

"The piece is architectural in its standard forms of elevation but the forms are mimicking the cliffs," she said.

An aluminum beam runs horizontally through all the components of the structure.

"I took the (water) line on the opposite side of the river as point zero. So the aluminum beam represents that line."

The sculpture is also designed to be in three pieces, representing the past, present and future of the Yonkers waterfront.

The progressive height of the piece is also representative of the course of urban development. "Redevelopment is moving up from the city so the height mimics that," she said.

She felt that having a translucent piece was also important.

"You can see upstream or downstream through the glass."

The installation of lights would add a whole new dimension to the project.

Any light fixtures would be external to structure," she said. "When lit, the glass panels will glow green."

For Porcari, this project has grown and evolved for longer than most.

"I did a sculpture of cliffs for a family member back in 2002, so it's been germinating for a long time."

The Yonkers project is one she feels a personal connection to. Porcari may be living and working in New Orleans but she is a tried and true Yonkers native.

"I was born in St John's Riverside Hospital," she said.

"If you go to a place you're not familiar with, you don't know what the fabric of life is there - here, I know," she said.