This sculpture by artist Pae White is made up of 1,232 colourful folded aluminium plates connected with 8,040 rivets, floating within the new public piazza across four floors of Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s recently completed building. Located on a constrained site with unconventional materials and geometry, and within a windy corridor, the artwork required innovative engineering to provide invisible support using just nine vertical rods, eight of which were tensioned against a net of horizontally inclined rods.
Creating a structure of such visual lightness required exceptional control of tension, stability and construction. The judges recognised the careful engineering behind the complex tension rod system, which responds successfully to lateral loading and challenging site constraints while maintaining the sculpture's delicate appearance. They particularly valued the thoughtful design of the connections, tensioning strategy and construction sequence, recognising the project as a well-conceived and expertly executed example of structural engineering supporting public art.