fabrication and installation

• The very first ring was extremely tiny - not much bigger than a bracelet. This was a minute model built by Greg Healey to accompany the design submission.
• Next a model was built, on a 1:5 scale, so that the aesthetics as well as the technical difficulties could be tested.
• The steel was first rolled into tubing. The steel tube was then rolled into curves. Each bar of each ring had a subtly different radius. Click here to view the Workshop images.
• To save floor space and keep the production affordable, each quadrant and then each ring was completed, rather than all the curves of a shared diameter being rolled at once.
• At 6.5 metres in diameter, each form was as big as Greg Healey and his team could make it. Any larger, and it would have become impossible to cut the rings from a single length of steel.
• Visitors to the site may notice the particularly white silver finish to the objects that glint in the sun. This is the result of the double-dip zinc galvanise.
• The biggest galvanizing bath in Adelaide was pushed to the limit by these giant pieces. Once the raw quarters were delivered, it proved impossible to dip them in one piece. Instead, to accommodate the unusual size each piece had to be double dipped.

installation

• The forms were built in four separate quarters to be joined on-site.
• Once the final pieces were complete and had been double-dipped at the galvanisers - a process that all too often results in runs and lumps and smears, but which has turned out beautifully in this case - the components were trucked out to the site.
• Due to their large size the forms only just fitted on the truck. Each quarter was lifted into place by crane.
• Because the proposed concrete footings had been superseded with more eco-sensitive steel piers, there was no room for error - the sections had to be carefully placed exactly where they were to be bolted down. Click here to view the installation.

The machinery that came out on that site was mind boggling. To see two and a half tonnes of steel floating through the air - when the first piece landed on the island and we put four bolts in it, that was my biggest feeling of relief. After weeks of hard work by 10 different people, the stress was intense: I was just so glad it fitted!

Greg Healey - artist/designer, Zero Waste Lifeline