Study Model for the Queen Museum of Art Proposal
Queens, New York 

Working in tandem with Arup Los Angeles to develop a viable suspended roofscape, we produced a detailed model that came to be known as the Octopus for the sucker-like pores on its underbelly. The relatively smooth surface developed during the competition is created using finite element analysis to determine its complex structural condition. This information allows us to divide the surface into tiles of varying depths, each of which holds a structural pin of precise and differing length. Strung together at their outer end with a steel cable net in tension and at their inner ends with a steel grid in compression, the assembly forms a taut sandwich closely approximating the real structural forces flowing through the roof.

Gnuform: Jason Payne, Heather Roberge