A saddle-shaped timber canopy nicknamed “the Pringle” has been craned into position at a film studio campus outside Atlanta, Georgia, forming North America’s longest bending-active timber gridshell. That is according to StructureCraft, the Vancouver-based timber engineer and design-builder behind the superstructure, which set the doubly curved grid in place earlier this week, ahead of a grand opening early next month in time for the FIFA World Cup.
Wood Central understands the 370-square-metre Assembly Studios Bandshell rests on two precast concrete plinths at the edge of a new public greenspace, its elastically bent timber laths arching up from a near-flat lattice into a doubly curved span of close to 25 metres. Stainless-steel shingles will clad the finished shell, shaped to catch the Georgia sun from almost any angle.
Bending-active gridshells of this kind trace back to the experimental lath roofs of the 1970s, before the structural type fell out of use worldwide, held back by the engineering nerve and the fused design-and-build approach it demands. StructureCraft head of engineering Lucas Epp said no comparable timber gridshell had been attempted at this scale anywhere in North America.
“It’s going to be an eye-catcher for sure,” Epp said.
The $10 million budget covers site works, civil engineering, landscaping, and building services, with the bandshell opening the long-delayed second phase of Assembly Atlanta, the 49-hectare Grey Media production campus in Doraville. Apple TV’s forthcoming remake of Cape Fear is among the productions recently shot at the studios.
Fabrication ran entirely offsite, with the timber members shaped in Canada and trucked to Georgia before Bailey Construction hoisted the completed shell onto its supports and fixed it at six points. Gipson Company president Jay Gipson said the curved geometry forced every surrounding platform, wall and stage element to be built to a tolerance of around five millimetres.
“These woods have turns, they have twists,” Gipson said.
Crews were scheduled to fix the plywood diaphragm in the week after the grid was set, followed by the roofing and secondary components that finish the canopy.
The canopy is not the only timber structure on the site, with a ring of curved glulam arches rising over the bandshell’s concrete amphitheatre stage, each rib craned in and tensioned against the others to hold the sweeping form. Smith Dalia Architects, the Atlanta practice behind the bandshell, drew the arches and the saddle shell as a single composition, a timber set piece for a park built to host open-air screenings and full-scale concerts.
