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concrete
Push Over – When Art Meets Engineering
Civil engineering and artistic vision came together in concrete recently when University
of Auckland civil engineering undergraduate students Jedediah Martin and Sumit Anand
collaborated on a piece of avant-garde art with artist Simon Glaister.
Push Over at the St Paul Street Art Gallery
The project, called Push Over, involved replicating a
concrete beam-column unit that supports the ceiling at
Auckland’s St Paul Street Art Gallery, earthquake testing it
in a research lab, and then exhibiting it next to the original
structure.
Associate Professor Jason Ingham, of the Department of
Civil and Environmental Engineering, says replicating the
unit was a significant undertaking. The crucifix-shaped
beam-column unit is reinforced with steel, stands 4.3
metres high and 3.8 metres across, and weighs 5.8 tonnes.
The artist and a team of engineering undergraduate
students built the unit at the Stresscrete precast yard in
Papakura as part of their final year course work. It was
then transported by crane and truck to the University of
Auckland Civil Engineering Test Hall, where it was subjected
to maximum earthquake simulations and load testing. The
damaged replica was then carefully transported to the
gallery for display.
“The construction process helped to foster interaction
between the university and local concrete industry, and
demonstrated concrete’s versatile properties,” Professor
Ingham says. “Additionally, the exhibition enhanced the
public’s knowledge of concrete construction and its seismic
performance.”
Simon Glaister, who is an artist from the AUT Art Gallery
and a qualified civil engineer, says the work drew an
analogy between the notions of structural, cultural and
environmental collapse. “Amongst other things, the project
playfully critiqued the authority of the museum within the
avant-garde, the nature of authorship, our obsession
with the innovative and new, and our society’s perverse
fascination with catastrophe,” he says.
The main sponsors of the Push Over project were Chartwell
Trust, Stresscrete, Fletchers (Golden Bay Cement and
Pacific Steel), Cassidy Construction, and Bridgemans
Concrete.
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