Olympic Museum bridge in final stages
The vast steel structure is being fabricated on Houston’s north side
In a sweaty industrial complex on Houston’s north side, welders continued working on seams of a 265foot steel structure in its final stages of fabrication: a pedestrian bridge that soon will become part of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs.
Wednesday was “fitting” day, when many of the crew at King Fabrication can finally see the pieces put together, stretched out from one end of the industrial assembly building into the outdoors. Final welding is being done on its joints before it’s cleaned up and painted, then loaded onto special trailers that will drive it nearly 1,000 miles to its home in Colorado.
As a boutique steel fabrication operation, King gets a lot of unusual projects, but this one stands out.
“This is very much art,” said Ericah Thomas, as she sprinkled her conversation with descriptions of the software they had to learn, quality procedures they had to create, and the accommodations it took to handle something so large with sheets of steel 2 to 2½ inches thick.
When some sections required that welders do their work kneeling inside ribbed sections of steel they had to buy Kevlar knee pads because the steel — heated to 350 degrees for welding — was melting the pads they usually use.
When the metal frame is finished and in place, a concrete walkway and handrails will be added to span a stretch of railroad land that takes people from the America the Beautiful Park to the new museum that is expected to open later this year. (The museum’s May opening has been delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.)
“There was a high level of commitment of the (museum’s) leadership to do something that would blow people away, that would embrace high design and com
munity building and that investing in architecture was an investment in our community and the story of the Olympics,” said Chris Jenkins, president of Nor’wood Development Group, a museum board member and chairman of its building committee. “We set that out as a guiding principal for the entire project.”
The museum, an $82 million public-private project, has already gotten attention from travel, architecture and design publications for its cultural significance and for its accessibility — you travel through the building on ramps.
Even in its current raw, unfinished form, it’s clear this is no ordinary bridge. Made with 480 tons of steel and 15 linear miles of welding, the bridge was created to be two mirror-image halves with an overhead arch that forms an oculus — an oval-shaped window — in the center.
Despite its massive infrastructure, artist renderings show a finished product that is elegant, sculptural and futuristic, a modernist interpretation of a very functional structure that has existed for centuries.
Planning for the museum facilities began eight years ago, and workers broke ground on the building two years ago. New York architects Diller Scofidio and Renfro designed both the museum and the bridge, with Merica May Jensen — who danced with the Atlanta Ballet before studying architecture — as the lead architect on the bridge project.
Jensen said the design is a
group effort, the product of sifting through many ideas, shapes and ideas, touched by so many that in the end no one person could say it was hers — or his — alone. Coincidentally, many of the primary architects, project managers, fabricators, designers and engineers on the project are women.
“Every time another woman joined the team I thought ‘how did this happen?’ The steel fabricator came on board and I saw her name was Ericah — how did that happen that she is a steel expert?’” Jensen said. “The women on the project are so strong and opinionated, but still very collaborative and honest. There are women in the field, but it’s very rare to have them in nearly every seat.”
The bridge’s elevation had to be low to not interfere with the view of Pike’s Peak in the distance. The park has been described as downtown Colorado Springs’ front lawn, so it also had to be welcoming.
“We tried every shape we could imagine and landed on this hybrid arch theme that helps us cover the span and keep it low,” Jensen said. “I’m more influenced by artists and sculpture — its’ nice to see how artists approach problems sometimes.”
Getting from shapes and concepts to where they are today with a massive structure sitting in a massive metal building hasn’t come without speed bumps.
Thomas and her detail manager Ash Thornton have worked on nothing but this bridge since November 2018 and her crew has worked on the actual steel for nearly a year. Thornton had to learn Rhino 3D software to create working models and 700 drawings before work could begin, and they had to double the size of their working “burn” table to 80 feet because the sheets of steel were so big.
When they needed a firm that could handle the big curvy sheet of metal that forms the oculus, Thomas googled “steel art in Houston” and found Campo Sheet Metal Works in Houston’s East End and invited them to help with that section.
The next step is getting it painted, and special trailers will come in to move the structure from the assembly building to the paint facility, where it will be lifted 7 feet in the air so that it can be painted from underneath while others paint the top side from a man lift.