The Millennium Park Fountain, a gift to the people of the City of Chicago by the Crown Family, is an interactive masterpiece designed by Spanish artist, Jaume Plensa. The integration of new, untested material and LED technology into a monument, which is to last decades, presented unprecedented aesthetic, technical, material and fabrication challenges.
When the Crown family commissioned Spanish artist Juame Plensa to design a monument for Chicago, the palette he used consisted of water, light, color, technology, interactivity, expansive size, imagery and glass. His final concept took on the shape of two massive, monolithic fountains with cascading water and LED video images projecting through solid glass brick walls. All of these elements presented unique challenges, especially Juame’s vision of colossal, continuous glass brick walls.
After months and months, world-renowned teams of engineers working with fabricators failed to come up with a successful design solution. Just when it seemed Juame’s concept would have to be abandoned, [the developers] learned of Circle Redmont® and brought its experienced teams on board to rekindle the concept.
The challenge of the project is to structure each of the 50’ high towers without blocking or penetrating the LED wall directly behind the glass bricks. The walls of the towers are made of custom 5” x 10” x 2” glass bricks secured into a 1” x 1/8” stainless steel grid. The “water white” glass bricks are produced by hand-pouring molten glass into cast iron molds by a 100-year-old glass foundry in Pennsylvania.
The top of the tower is designed to incorporate a concealed trough regulating the flow of water down the face of the glass bricks. The water trough, roof and LED are all supported by structural frames, which are independent of the glass brick skin allowing for expansion and contraction of the tower. The apparent simplicity of this structure allows the water and the projected faces to be the focus of the fountain. Circle Redmont proved it could successfully design, engineer and manufacture the two 52’ high by 25’ wide glass brick structures. Prefabricated glass brick wall panels were built at Circle Redmont’s facility and then erected at the job site under Circle Redmont supervision. All materials, including the glass blocks, were manufactured in the United States.
As a dramatic centerpiece to the park, the two towers appear as simple, translucent, glass brick forms that glow with internal light on three sides, while on the fourth large LED images of faces portray Chicagoans of all ages, and backgrounds.
Today, the Millennium Fountain Towers in Chicago stand as a staggering example of American ingenuity and engineering. They were built to last so they can be enjoyed by millions of visitors to Millennium Park for many years to come.
This entry was posted
on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 2:18 pm and is filed under news releases.
