Four examples of dynamic, stand-out engineering works dotted around Sydney’s CBD stand as art installations created to inspire creativity, spark innovation and challenge preconceived notions of balance.
The Engineering Art Talk and Walk, a self-guided walk, is the highlight of Australian Engineering Week 2013, a campaign which aims to demonstrate how engineers impact the society.
It is one of a series of events hosted by Engineers Australia, Sydney Division, and will feature four feats of engineering that act as permanent art installations in Sydney’s CBD.
These art installations were engineered by structural, remedial and event engineering consultancy Partridge:
HALO
This major Sydney art installation constructed in July 2012 is a large circular carbon fibre ring, 12 metres in diameter and suspended eccentrically on a 13m high steel pole at a pivot joint that allows the ring to gently turn, tip and rock with only the force of the wind.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Artist in Residence is a temporary arts project conceived to enliven the heritage-listed Irving Street Brewery Building at Central Park during the long period of construction for the new Frasers Developments project, One Central Park.
FORGOTTEN SONGS
This project is a City of Sydney initiative, and was originally installed as part of the ‘Art and About’ live lanes program. The installation includes 186 bird cages suspended on a system of cables above Angel Place. The cages house a sound system which plays the calls of birds which would have inhabited the Sydney CBD prior to the arrival of the first fleet.
WINDLINES
The Windlines sculpture comprises a quill which is free to rotate as a weathervane atop a vertical mast. The quill has been balanced about the support spindle by using a solid “nib” and additional lead ballast.
Group managing director at Partridge and member of Engineers Australia Eamonn Madden will also give a short talk on engineering art, providing attendees with a balanced historical perspective of the development of engineering alongside art.
“You can go right back to Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo, these guys had an understanding of physical things that actually worked. You can’t build a sculpture if it doesn’t stand up, so they had an inherent understanding of engineering,” says Madden.
“Engineering art is not new. It surprises me that people don’t see that both are linked and complementary, after all, engineering is as much art as science.”
The 2013 Australian Engineering Week will take place from 4 – 11 August 2013. The Art Talk by Madden is on Saturday 1- August at 11am, at the UTS Broadway Building 2, Level 5, Room 32, Broadway NSW. To register for this free talk, email your full name to [email protected].
For more information, please visit www.makeitso.org.au/aew.
Images: Partridge and Turpin+Crawford Studio.
