As part of an atrium refurbishment, hanging high above the atrium space at one of the UK’s largest computer companies is this modern tensile fabric sculpture. Glowing red, the IT giant’s corporate colour, this piece of fabric art helps to form a welcoming and appealing environment to encourage the building’s use during the working week.
As a part of the complete refurbishment of the public areas, Architen Landrell were approached by architects Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will to realise their central concept for the atrium space – a towering angular fabric sculpture. Seemingly floating without support and echoing the footprint of the newly installed café, the feature is an imposing spectacle, dynamically shimmering in the huge atrium void, echoing the company’s strong brand colours.
With an existing gantry walkway in the roof, we were unable to connect our support cables directly to the roof steelwork members and therefore had to look to connect horizontally and keep member sizes to an absolute minimum. The design process involved a number of prototypes to ensure that the supporting framework was optimally sized, with precisely rolled aluminium supports to account for the deflection caused by the weight of the fabric.
In order to accommodate the other uses for the space, the structure had to be designed to be fully demountable without powered access. Using 4no. load winches controlled via one remote control the entire sculpture can be lowered to the ground and demounted. In addition, to allow simple and effective re-installation of the panels in their specific design locations, we used quick release connections at the end of each panel where the fabric met the cable.
Installation was completed in a very tight time-frame by the Architen installation team and proved challenging with the integration of the motorized suspension system in to 3rd floor slab. This was completed to a high finish and within programme to a satisfied client.
Want to see more? Take a closer look at this beautiful tensile fabric structure in situ: <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/5ni-rG3kfAI” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
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