[ Kram/Weisshaar ] VTOL

VTOL - Vertical Take Off and Landing, an installation by designers Kram/Weisshaar, went on show outside the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna this month.

The 1.3cm thick concrete installation is part of Vienna Design Week, which runs until 12th October. Photography courtesy of Ditz Fejer.

The following is from Kram/Weisshaar:

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At the invitation of the Vienna Design Week, Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram have designed, developed and implemented this large-scale public installation in close collaboration with Wolfgang Rieder and his company Rieder Smart Elements.

A twisting, glass fibre-reinforced concrete surface – 100 m2 in size and only 13 mm thick – appears to float weightlessly above the ground on a mirrored pedestal. VTOL is shaped with the aid of a set of software tools especially developed by the designers.

Custom programming was introduced to allow for the flexible and rapid manufacturing of unique parametric concrete objects.In this regard it can be seen as the successor of their VENDÔME project introduced several months prior at Design Miami/ Basel 2008.

In both cases the intelligent combination of the given static properties of concrete with the dynamic potential of process-oriented software forms the central theme for the project.

VTOL is constructed using an innovative glass fibre-reinforced concrete called fibreC. The material can be thought of as a concrete skin, exhibiting the best properties of both glass fibre and concrete.

The material is constructed from purely mineral raw materials, environmentally-friendly, solid and durable, malleable and easy to control, thin-walled and extremely light.