The Zephyr is one in a series of art installations by the artist THEVERYMANY and its director Marc Fornes. This particular installation exists as an outdoor pavilion located in Lubbock, Texas. It offers a point of gathering as well as shade to those who come to experience its formal topology.
From a structural engineering perspective these types of sculptures are exciting in that they become an opportunity to understand three-dimensional volumes creates by two-dimensional surfaces. This specific class of structures, called “Surface Structures” generate their load carrying capacity through double curvature within a range of geometries that becomes self-supporting.
The nature of the surface structure causes an iterative formal process of adjustment and modification to determine a solution that falls within the capacity of the materials used. Once a form is derived by the artist and vetted by the engineer, the analytical process takes on a closer examination of components. Here, the exterior is actually a quasi-surface created from overlapping discretized flat plate elements.
The behavior of the quasi-surface is much more complex than a contiguous surface and depends on the orientation of its component parts and its internal methods of attachment to approximate continuity. The analysis of such forms which considers all the component parts becomes a challenge to software and hardware computational limits. Therefore, incorporating greater scale and complexity become a constant process of exploration. This investigation also leads to an understanding of the structural behavior of Surface Structures in a way that becomes a craft in and of itself.
PROJECT TEAM
Artist: Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY
