LOVE SONG by RON ARAD
Art is in the air.
This fall, something unexpected is taking shape at CityCenterDC. As work begins on a new Gateway by internationally acclaimed artist and designer Ron Arad, the site itself becomes a work of art. Arad’s LOVE SONG stretches across the structure at monumental scale, transforming what might otherwise be a moment of transition into something worth stopping to experience.
The idea behind the work begins with a visual discovery characteristic of Arad’s playful approach to language and form: LOVE, reflected and reimagined, becomes SONG. Two words become connected through perspective, inviting us to look once, then look again. This October, LOVE SONG also becomes the backdrop for a series of weekly live jazz performances in The Plaza. Music gives another dimension to the work as musicians reinterpret love songs across generations, bringing art and sound together for evenings designed to be experienced in the heart of the city.
It is the latest chapter in CityCenterDC’s ongoing commitment to making art part of everyday life. Here, the city becomes the gallery, a construction site becomes a canvas, and a glimpse of what is coming next becomes an experience of its own.
LOVE SONG:
A Matter of Perspective
LOVE Song is a recurring idea in Ron Arad’s work, explored across sculpture, furniture, and graphic art. At its heart is a deceptively simple visual relationship: SONG emerges as a reflection of LOVE. Through Arad’s continuous, fluid line, language becomes form. Letters bend and connect, positive and negative space shift, and what appears to be one word reveals another depending on how it is seen.
Arad has explored LOVE Song through materials ranging from mirror-polished metal to marble, allowing the same idea to change through scale, surface, and context. At CityCenterDC, it takes on an entirely new dimension. Two canvases, each measuring 52 feet wide by 26 feet tall, wrap opposite faces of the future Gateway. One presents LOVE while the other reveals its reflected counterpart, SONG. The sweeping lines of the artwork also offer a subtle introduction to the sculptural language of the permanent work being created behind them.
The installation is therefore both artwork and anticipation. On view through Spring 2027, LOVE SONG gives visitors a chance to encounter Arad’s work while something entirely new takes shape just beyond the canvas. The permanent Gateway, also conceived by Arad, will be revealed in Spring 2027, introducing a new work of public art to CityCenterDC.
Until then, LOVE SONG offers a glimpse into the artist’s world and a reminder that sometimes transformation itself is worth seeing.
Ron ARAD,
A Master of Art
Born in Tel Aviv in 1951 and educated at London’s Architectural Association, Arad founded the design and production studio One Off in 1981 before establishing Ron Arad Associates and later Ron Arad Architects. Throughout his career, materials have been a source of experimentation, bent, molded, polished, and transformed into unexpected forms that resist easy categorization.
Ron ARAD,
Between Art, Design
& Architecture
For more than four decades, Ron Arad has challenged the boundaries between art, design, and architecture, creating objects and environments that are as much about curiosity and experimentation as they are about function.
His breakthrough Rover Chair, created in 1981 from a discarded Rover car seat mounted on a tubular steel frame, established an approach that would continue throughout his career: familiar materials reconsidered through a completely different point of view. Celebrated works including the Big Easy, Well Tempered Chair, Bookworm bookshelf, and Tom Vac followed, while his work entered the collections of institutions including The Museum of Modern Art in New York and Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Arad’s thinking has also expanded to architectural scale, from Design Museum Holon in Israel to Médiacité in Liège and projects throughout Europe and beyond. Washington audiences may already know his work through The Watergate Hotel, where Arad helped reimagine the landmark’s interiors for its 2016 reopening.
Across disciplines and scales, a common thread remains: Arad asks us to reconsider what we think we already know. A chair becomes sculpture. Language becomes form. A reflection reveals something entirely new.
At CityCenterDC, that spirit begins with LOVE SONG. What comes next will be revealed in Spring 2027.
