Project Overview
On a typical day in sunny Miami, Fla., scores of people stroll from the waterfront park to the city’s Museum Park on Biscayne Bay, which is home to the new Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science. To compliment the two museums and provide visitors with a place to relax and revel in the ocean-side scenery, the owners recently built the Knight Plaza, a 40,000-ft2 public square that links the campus to the waterfront.
The plaza has become a destination all its own, thanks to the 55 massive precast concrete sculptural planters cast in curved geometric patterns that mimic the local flora and constant roll of the nearby ocean waves. “The owners wanted the largest and most beautiful artistic hardscapes to be featured in the plaza to complement the art and science museums,” says Del Hight, president of STABIL Concrete Products, the precaster on the Knight Plaza project. “They wanted a place where guests could admire the hardscapes as well as rest, while visiting one museum and then the next.”
Precast Solution
In the planning stages, the architects envisioned a highly articulated wave-like pattern for the multiple planter sections, with rounded rims extending out for seating. “As they imaged these hardscapes, they also planned for a fluid flow to all of the elements, where no seams would show whatsoever,” Hight says. Precast concrete was the only material they considered to accomplish the dramatic wave effect within the city’s tight budget.
The challenge was that the giant concrete planters would have to be reinforced due to their extensive size and weight, but the designers knew that reinforcement and anchors would spoil the flowing design they had imagined.
Hight’s team was tasked with figuring out how to fabricate these sculptural planters, reinforce them, and be able to move them without affecting the finish. They solved the problem by first fabricating a cardboard and wood version of the planters, then they made a model out of fiberglass, then created an inverted version of the model as a mold.
To reinforce the massive planters without piercing or penetrating the continuous fluid outside wave design, Hight’s team crafted and installed galvanized steel reinforcement inside the mold along with steel braces that had connections for rigging so the pieces could be lifted and transported without damaging the outside visible area of the planters in any way. The surface of each planter was then hand-feathered and lightly sandblasted to deliver a flawless, flowing finish.
The planters now anchor the popular plaza, and because they are made with high-performance precast concrete they require little maintenance, and the owners are confident that they can easily withstand the high winds, severe downpours, punishing sun, and salt air that is all common to the region.
“We love that precast concrete was used to achieve all of the architect’s and designer’s vision for this project,” Hight says. “Hundreds of thousands of museum patrons will walk through this plaza, and use and enjoy these hardscape elements every day, all year long, year after year.” |