'Giro' sculpture planned as gateway to Memphis airport
A towering, red and white cylindrical sculpture is in the works to greet motorists driving to and from Memphis International Airport.
The 103-foot-tall cylinder, named Giro, has been designed by California company Electroland to give passersby the illusion of turning gears.
The $300,000 public art installation would be one of the UrbanArt Commission's most ambitious works yet.
Years in progress, it has been cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration as posing no obstruction to airport operations.
Electroland is working with Memphis-based engineers and architects A2H to nail down details of fabricating the piece, and officials aren't sure when it will be completed.
It's the UrbanArt Commission's largest project since artist Vito Acconci's installation outside Cannon Center for the Performing Arts in 2003, commission executive director Lauren Kennedy said. Acconci's "Roof Like Fluid Flung Over the Plaza" is composed of stainless steel and mirrored Plexiglas in funnel shapes at the northeast corner of Poplar and Front.
The commission considered Giro important enough to devote a full year's allocation of city funding from Percent for Art, Kennedy said. The program, originated in 2002, sets aside no more than 1 percent of capital improvement dollars annually for public art.
Electroland was one of three firms that competed for the project in response to a request for qualifications, Kennedy said. Electroland created an LED lighting design for the pedestrian bridge over Court Avenue next to the University of Memphis law school Downtown.
"What Electroland and team have come up with is what I think will be a really iconic piece, especially coming in and out of the airport," Kennedy said. "It's a 100-foot tower, so the scale of it is going to be impressive."
Bands of red and white fins create the impression of a vertical stack of gears. The color pairing is one that is commonly used in navigational aids behind the scenes at airports.
"It will look almost as if it's rotating as you drive past it," Kennedy said.
UrbanArt applied to the FAA for approval of the tower's height and proximity to the airport and received a "determination of no hazard to air navigation" on Aug. 26.
Scott Brockman, president of the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority, said the authority had no oversight of the project because it's off airport property. The airport relied on the FAA to vet the application. While the sculpture would line up with the westernmost runway, Brockman said high-efficiency aircraft that use the Memphis runways are thousands of feet off the ground by the time they clear the runway's end.
"We care about things that could create a distractions or impediments to aircraft flight," Brockman said. There was no oversight of the artistic concept but "we looked at whether it's something the community can be proud of," Brockman said.
Planner Chad Bowman, consultant to the city Division of Housing and Community Development on the airport area, said the public art is a logical followup to other beautification efforts in the Plough Boulevard corridor.
"The purpose of it is to create a landmark, something iconic that can represent our airport," said Bowman, of Bow & Aero Planning Management. "It's also to complement some of the work that has been done, the gateways and beautification, the planting of trees and shrubs."
Bowman studied development of an aerotropolis, or airport-centered community, surrounding the airport.
Kennedy said the UrbanArt Commission hopes to have a timeline for Giro by the end of the year with a possibility of seeing the piece installed next year.
