Page 219 - AGC_EN_iBook

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LIGhT 3
From the very rst design sketches, the idea of a sculpture repre- senting a transparent glass cage tickled the minds of the design team. Somewhat in doubt, they asked others to give the subject some thought. however, the original idea stood up to all question- ing, quite simply because it was a good idea. Developed with great patience, care and attention to detail, it turned out, surprisingly,
to be the best answer.
In the wake of the bead-blasted stainless steel torii sculpture designed by Philippe Samyn for the Nissan EuropeanTechnol- ogy Centre, here was the idea being used for a second time in Louvain-la-Neuve.
LIGhT 3 is a cuboid 13.50 m wide, 1.35 m thick and 17.10 m high, placed 2.70 m in front of the south louvre facade, in the axis of the gallery.
The cuboid is made of:
– 11 glazed ‘ladders’, 1.35 m wide and 17.10 m high, spaced 1.35 m apart at right angles to the facade. Each of these ladders is made of 9 plates of glass 1.35 m wide and 1.80 m high, resting on a glass base 0.90 m high.
– 2 ‘chessboards’ parallel to the south facade, each attached at right angles to the 11 ladders, one on their north side, the other
on the south side.The 10 x 10 row chessboard is made alternately of 1.35 m wide glass squares and open squares. In line with the ladders, the 9 upper rows are 1.80 m high, while the bottom one
is 0.90 m.The glass squares are staggered, resembling the dark squares of a chessboard. Moreover, the glass squares of the south chessboard correspond in their positions to the open squares of the north chessboard, and vice versa.
The whole is thus made up of 210 panes of extra-clear 12 mm tempered glass, each 1.35 m wide. A total of 189 panes are 1.80 m high, and 21 are 0.90 m high (99 of the 1.80 m panes belong to the
ladders and 90 to the chessboards, while 11 of the 0.90 m panes belong to the ladders and 10 to the chessboards).
The sculpture is installed in a rectangular pool 18.90 m long and 4.05 m wide, with half of the base module submerged.This creates the impression that the sculpture continues into the ground.
The 210 glass panes are mounted in a three-dimensional orthogo- nal lattice of 12 mm2 bars made of polished stainless steel, and are held in place by highly elastic black silicone.
In the vertical direction, 2 sets of 11 bars 17.10 m high hold together both the glass boxes of the 2 chessboards and the glass panes of the 11 ladders.These 22 vertical bars work in a push/pull manner, taking up any wind forces on the sculpture.
The vertical bars of the north set are connected at a height of 11.70 m to the upper part of the uprights holding the south facade’s louvres by 9 horizontal struts.
In a horizontal direction, the 11 vertical bars of each of the 2 sets are interconnected by 11 horizontal bars spaced 0.90 m (the 2 low- est ones) and 1.80 m apart.The 2 sets are also connected transver- sally (north-south) via 135 bars, each 1.35 m long.
This construction of bars thus forms a type of ‘monkey cage’, taking up any wind-induced shear stress, whatever the direction of the wind.
This stress is taken up by the shearing of the tempered glass panes and passed on the ‘monkey cage’ via dihedral neoprene wedges at the four corners of each pane.Though seemingly simple, this structure required a large amount of very detailed calculation.