Commissioned by GoTriangle, this giant, stainless-steel installation designed by Creative Machines is an homage to the City of Oaks that will delight tourists and locals alike
by Ayn-Monique Klahre

If you haven’t visited the recently opened Raleigh Union Station (RUS) Bus Facility yet, consider swinging by for a photo op. In September, a 9-foot tall sculpture called Acorn was installed that sparkles by day and sets out a rainbow-hued glow at night. “It’s been really neat seeing how much it adds to the space,” says Bryan Hammond, manager of transit design and construction for GoTriangle. “It’s a gathering point, a focal point, a place for people to take pictures.”

The acorn is the fruit, so to speak, of a yearslong project from GoTriangle funded by the Wake Transit Plan to connect the train station to local and regional buses. The RUS Bus Facility, which opened in July, includes eight passenger bays, waiting areas, bike lockers and other amenities. “The station has a direct connection to Union Station and the acorn draws people into the transit facility,” says Hammond. 

To create the installation, GoTriangle sent out a call for artists and then enlisted the team at Creative Machines, an Arizona-based firm with an office here in Raleigh, to make the design. “We wanted something physical — something creative and kinetic,” Hammond says. Creative Machines, which specializes in public art and museum exhibits, offered several ideas that were based on Raleigh’s title as “City of Oaks.”

“We always start by thinking about the people who will encounter the work,” says Creative Machines founder Joseph O’Connell, who worked with designer Ellie Franzen and project manager Alexandra Kirschbaum on this project. “It has to make them happy or challenge them in an interesting way. And for a site like this, you want an object you can identify at a distance, but with a whole lot of detail up close.” 

Acorn is made of a contiguous sheet of stainless steel with a laser-cut design incorporating dogwood flowers and oak tree branches on its surface. “There’s no bracing on the inside, you can see all the way through it. The amount of craftsmanship that went into it blew me away,” says Hammond. “A lot of the challenge is to make it both substantial and massive, and also light and airy,” says O’Connell. (Still, it weighs 900 pounds.)

The sculpture always has a bit of a glow, but in the evenings, Acorn offers a faint projection of lights — changing from purples and blues to spring colors to reddish oranges — that land on its platform or the people sitting there. “It’s almost like the sculpture is tapping you on the shoulder and saying hi, like it’s reaching out and touching you,” says O’Connell. “There’s no complicated meaning, it’s just about celebrating beauty and mystery.” Hammond agrees. “It’s a simple idea, but executed really, really well,” he says. “My hope is that it will become a landmark in Raleigh.”  

This article originally appeared in the November 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.