Project:  The Canyon - Salt Lake City Airport

Design:  Gordon Heuther

Scope:  The capabilities of the tube bender have allowed us to create over 500 individual tensile membrane fins for the Salt Lake City Airport project over the course of a few years. Once the tube bender has output each piece, the pieces are then tooled and assembled. Next, each piece is fitted with a custom cover to create what’s called a fin. The covers themselves come from our cutting tables found within our fabric department. There could be as many as 50-100 pieces of fabric on one fin that must be sewn, and test fitted to each frame. Our team cuts, sews, and inspects each individual fin prior to packaging.

This project has been in the making for the last three years and has included multiple vendors and partnerships upon completion. The artist behind ‘The Canyon‘ installation at the Salt Lake City Airport is Gordon Huether. Initially, Gordon was inspired by the way nature replaces itself and gradually changes over time. He was struck by the beauty behind canyons, following the concept that canyons evolve and change over millions of years, as rock slowly weakens and crumbles to create an entirely new structure. Gordon began drawing the framework, set it up to scale, and created a base model out of paper. Once the model was complete, our team at Rainier scanned his model structure to bring it through multiple layers of distilling and refinement. We took this model and turned it into a digital rendering. Rainier took on this project knowing that we have extraordinary capabilities within our warehouse, with the ability to manufacture, design, and install this piece of work.