This post is fifth in a series about Sky Portal in Albuquerque, New Mexico

All the site work obviously was done there, it was done locally by a great landscape contractor.  And there was quite a bit to that:  there was concrete work, stone work, electrical, stormwater considerations–new drains had to be dug–and then all the footings, which are quite substantial, for those poles.  

The poles themselves–I thought, well these essentially are light poles, so I’m going to find a light pole manufacturer and see if I can get a customized situation going.  So I ended up with one of the largest light pole manufacturers in the world, which had advantages and disadvantages.  The advantage is that I wanted these poles tapered.  I didn’t want a straight cylinder, I wanted them to taper, from large diameter to smaller, because I think a straight cylinder would look bad.  And it was also a lot of extra weight.  They had the ability to do that, no problem, they do it all the time.  And that was great.  Everything I wanted about these poles except for the top connection was pretty standard.  And the tilt.  There was some engineering coordination, because they’re used to engineering their products and that’s it, and any deviation from the standard is outside of their realm.  So I had an independent structural engineer, and the coordination of that was a little tricky.

The stainless steel cylinder was fabricated here in Minneapolis, by Hans, and that was great, it was a great challenge for him.  It’s a steel frame with sheets that make up the face of the cylinder, so it’s not solid.  And getting those sheets on there and polishing any imperfections– I know at that point, there were things that were outside of his knowledge base, and he had 3M coming down and looking and recommending abrasives and solutions, it was really cool. 

And I wove the fiber here as well, in his studio.  And one thing that you’ll never see is the way this thing was shipped down there.  I mean that thing weighs a ton, maybe literally.  Probably with the crate it’s literally a ton.  It’s a lot.  I had to build a special crate… [Come back next week for that part of the story!]

Albuquerque, public art, sky portal