The requirement: Helically bending 5″ Schedule40 pipe with both variable pitch and variable radius.
The application: a sculpture commissioned for the FireKeepers Casino.
When FireKeepers Casino announced that they would add an onsite hotel, making their already luxurious gambling facility into a casino/hotel resort, they turned to Hotel|Casino|Resort design specialists, Thalden, Boyd & Emery Architects. Thalden, Boyd & Emery came up with a clean, sleek design to brighten up the lobby of the recently opened, casino-attached hotel. There rises almost 40ft from the hotel floor a large artistic flame sculpture which is very much so in line with the FireKeepers logo and theme. The team of architects kept FireKeepers vertical flame element logo as one of the main design features throughout their resort. The sculpture, which resembles rising flames, is lit from within giving the lobby a glowing ambiance that one would associate with the glow of a burning fire. 5″ Schedule40 pipe was curved helically with both variable pitch and variable radius. The twisting of the pipes as they rise upwards draws the viewer’s eyes towards the beautiful vaulted ceiling which is also lit with warming colors, all of which adds to the mood of the hotel lobby entrance. In order to ensure the accuracy of the build to the design, templates were used every 5-7ft of vertical height within the sculpture. Each pipe had to fit precisely through its own designated hole within the template as it twisted its way toward the ceiling. This need for accuracy proved challenging for the rolling/curving aspect of the project to satisfy the challenge of fitting templates. Many hours were spent pre-engineering each curved pipe within the sculpture, calculating the many changing radii and the varying pitch of each section of pipe.
