This article was taken from the June 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Measuring 76 metres and weighing in at more than 70 tonnes,
Slipstream is Europe's longest permanent sculpture. It dominates the Covered Court, the vast atrium in Heathrow's new Terminal 2, which opens on June 4.
Slipstream is the work of British sculptor Richard Wilson, who previously filled a room at the Saatchi Gallery with oil for
20:50 and balanced a bus on the roof of Bexhill's De La Warr Pavilion for Hang On A Minute Lads, I've Got A Great Idea. Its shape represents the path of a Zivko Edge 540 stunt plane moving through the air. "I was looking for a small aeroplane that could spiral and cartwheel through space," says Wilson. "The tumbling generates a continuous form."
Wilson consulted London-based structural engineers Price &
Myers, who used aeronautical software to simulate a plane's movement and assess how the piece could be hung from the court's four slender columns. The solution: to design the sculpture as a bridge. "To span between four columns 18 metres apart, you've got to make sure it doesn't fall or sag," says Wilson.
He then joined forces with Hull-based Commercial Systems International (CSI), who visualised, prototyped and crafted each of
Slipstream's undulations off-site, assembling thousands of components into 23 transportable cassettes. They were then suspended in place and "bolted together within millimetre accuracy", explains CSI designer Maarten Kleinhout. "Each one weighs about four tonnes -- the same as a large car."
Kleinhout says such a structure would have been impossible ten years ago: "The software to visualise something this complex has only been around five or six years."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
