Buildings
United States Air Force Memorial To Be Dedicated This Weekend
(archrecord.construction.com - 10/12/2006)
By Violet
Law
A memorial
designed by the late James Ingo Freed for the U.S. Air
Force will be officially dedicated October 14 and 15 on a
promontory next to Arlington National Cemetery. The memorial
evokes the Thunderbirds’ bomb-burst flying formation,
featuring three stainless-steel spires that rise from a granite
base and arc to varying heights.
The slender yet sinewy form of the memorial
exudes an almost-nothing elegance, belying the complexity
of the engineering work sheathed in the spires’ three-quarter-inch-thick
steel skin: Ove Arup & Partners specified a reinforced
concrete core, a solid steel tip, and lead ball dampers to
minimize swaying in each spire. The 2,000 pound-balls are
encased in stainless steel shells that roll freely within
octagonal boxes lined with synthetic damper pads. The total
above-ground weight of the spires is 2,300 tons. Construction
took nine months and cost more than $30 million.
Freed’s other works inside the
Beltway include the Ronald Reagan Building and International
Trade Center as well as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Aeronautical-themed architecture bookends his oeuvre: One
of his earliest projects was a prototype for air traffic control
towers that was implemented repeatedly nationwide and overseas.
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