Construction of RBC WaterPark Place III on Toronto’s Queens Quay wasn’t complete until the world was delivered to its lobby last December. In this case, the world was represented by Compartment Earth, a 16,000 pound stainless steel sculpture conceived by American artist Roxy Paine.
The sphere measures about 12 feet in diameter and was fabricated at Brooklyn’s Kammetal Inc., a full-service metal fabrication company specializing in architectural and ornamental metals.
Among Kammetal’s signature projects was the construction of the stainless steel and glass encapsulation of the One World Trade Center beacon.
The fabrication of Compartment Earth took place over six months under the care of lead fabricator Joshua Sledge, manager for special projects at Kammetal. The stainless steel plates were waterjet cut with precision and rolled into curved shapes around a hollow core. The fabrication process employed the labour of five skilled metalworkers and two assistants.
When completed, Compartment Earth was shipped to the Barrie offices of Western Mechanical Electrical Millwright Services Ltd. where it was placed in storage until construction at RBC WaterPark Place III was sufficiently completed. It was delivered by tractor trailer to Toronto in mid-December on behalf of Western Mechanical’s client, Lorvin Steel Ltd.
"For the sake of safety we assumed the load of the sculpture would be 20,000 lbs. instead of the advertised 16,000 lbs.," says Mark Carney, a structural engineer with Western Mechanical.
"We had to begin by removing some of the plate glass panels from the front of the finished building so that we could bring the globe inside. The doors simply weren’t tall or wide enough to bring it straight in."
The floor in the lobby is located directly above the switchgear and transformer rooms of the building.
"The floor wouldn’t have likely supported both the globe and a forklift if we’d brought it in directly," says Carney.
"Instead, we built a set of tracks from Queens Quay outside, right to the base plate that was already set up in the lobby. We used hardwood blocking underneath the rails to disperse the weight of the assembly and to protect the marble floor."
An aluminum tube dolly was placed on the tracks and the sculpture was lifted outside by forklift onto a skid fitted to the dolly.
"We were able to just roll it into place along the tracks, then used small hydraulic jacks to lift it into its final resting place," says Carney.
"There, we used anchor bolts to fit it to the base plate in the proper orientation."
Members of the team who moved the steel globe into place may not have found themselves any closer to answering the question "what is art?"
But they did leave with bragging rights. Who else could claim to have moved the world on a Saturday night?
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