Overview
Naga is a 100-foot, 12,000-pound sea serpent coiling out of Rainbow Falls Pond along Golden Gate Park's car-free JFK Promenade — the largest public art installation in the park's history. Led by artist Cjay Roughgarden, the sculpture was built by a volunteer crew of over 200 people who contributed 35,000 hours of labor. Standing 25 feet tall, Naga's epoxy-coated steel frame is wrapped in a stainless wire mesh skin and more than 5,000 hand-painted aluminum scales, with laser-cut fins, cast aluminum spike sheaths, and acrylic-tipped spikes adding to its presence. Custom 3D-printed mechanisms let the serpent exhale bubbles every 15 minutes, and three circuits of addressable LEDs illuminate its body, fins, and spikes from sunset to midnight. Originally approved as a two-year temporary installation, Naga's popularity has since sparked ongoing discussions about making it a permanent fixture in the park.

My Role
I translated the artist's sketches into a fully parametric structural model in Rhino and Grasshopper. Working from Roughgarden's design, I broke the serpent's complex, curving form down into logical, fabricable components — each body segment built from four longitudinal steel tubes tied together by a network of transverse steel ribs, forming the structural body that the scaled skin was ultimately attached to.

Using Grasshopper, I generated the spreadsheets that drove fabrication: part numbers, lengths, radii of curvature, quantities, orientations, and part relationships. I also designed and generated the assembly jigs used to hold components in proper alignment during welding, helping the volunteer fabrication team build 100 feet of curving steel geometry accurately and repeatably.

Quick Facts
Length: 100 ft | Height: 25 ft | Weight: 12,000 lbs
Scales: 5,000+ hand-painted aluminum scales
Build: 200+ volunteers, 35,000 labor hours, ~18 months on-site installation
Location: Rainbow Falls Pond, JFK Promenade, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco