Rope Assemblies helps create St Paul's Gateway
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The contemporary gateway structure creates over 400 mirrored images of St Paul's Cathedral as pedestrians arrive out of St Paul's Underground Station. The design features hundreds of highly reflective anodised aluminium poles suspended vertically from a simple lightweight structural canopy. In the middle of the structure, users will find a reflective oculus and dome of poles which have been derived using the same mathematical geometry Christopher Wren used when designing the dome of St Paul's Cathedral.
Osman Marfo-Gyasi, studio project leader at ScottWhitbystudio comments: "We were initially approached by the Cheapside Bid Alliance alongside the London Festival of Architecture who commissioned us to come up with ideas for something to animate the traffic island outside St Paul's Cathedral. Marc Thomas of Millimetre, our initial fabricator on the job recommended that we get in touch with Rope Assemblies. Marc had done a lot of legwork for us, so we knew what kit we needed to procure, but the Rope Assemblies team was extremely helpful in ensuring we were able to get what we needed and also keep within budget."
He continues: "The Rope Assemblies kit was extremely well made - while installing the cables for the structure, they were put under an immense level of tension and none of them showed any signs of failure. The entire experience of working with the RA team made for a stress-free experience - they were able to grasp the nuances of what we needed and supply the correct products which were all made to order."
The timescales for the project were particularly tight - with just three weeks from making initial contact with Rope Assemblies to installation. "The main challenges for this project were budget and timescale. Thanks to Linda Martin, Rope Assemblies' managing director, we were able to negotiate a price that would allow us to keep in budget and RA was exemplary with the delivery of its products within our time frame," he says.
(Jim Evans)
