Project: Children's Museum
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

An EXTECH® Custom Project

(ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF EXTECH'S®
ENGINEERING CAPABILITIES)

California Artist, Ned Kahn, had the idea to make a facade composed of thousands of small, translucent elements which would be activated by the wind. When displayed as a large wall, the pattern of the wind is evident as it moves across the wall.

This makes for an ever-changing facade and is an educational tool for the Pittsburgh Children's Museum, reminding all of us children that we live in a sea of air, and further, teaching us that those air currents are not necessarily in the forms we think they are.

The Flapperwall facade provides other advantages. It reduces the solar heat load on the building and provides, to an extent, a thermal envelope.

When lighted from behind at night, the entire facade glows. Add a nighttime wind, and you have a dynamic piece of art.

Working with the Artist's basic concept and an exterior wall design by Koning Eizenberg Architects, EXTECH® engineered a system which accomplished the goal. EXTECH® provided an aluminum space frame from Triodetic and, on it, mounted vertical aluminum channels at the exterior. Holes were drilled into the sides of those channels and 1/2" diameter stainless steel rods, each 4' long, were inserted into the channels and held in place with stainless steel clips at each end. Eight translucent acrylic flappers, approximately 5-1/2" x 5-1/2", were threaded onto each rod. The flappers were custom extruded to EXTECH®'s specifications and were fitted with bushings of a special low-friction thermoplastic material. In all, more than 39,000 flappers covered the four walls of the building.

Before building the Flapperwall, EXTECH did extensive testing and built mock-ups which were placed at the jobsite and then approved by the building owner.

We are proud of this project. Starting with the Artist's basic concept, we engineered a system that accomplished the goal, and did so at a reasonable cost. Once again, it illustrates why EXTECH is a source for creative engineering.

Click here to request a CD of the complete 'Articulated Cloud' video by Ned Kahn.

 

Close up of flapper assemblies and space frame.

39,000 5-1/2" x 5-1/2" translucent acrylic flappers
were installed on this project.