Page Floats a Cedar Sunshade in Albuquerque

The catenary cedar sunshade which helps protect the courtyard of the GSA office building in Albuquerque gets another look by Anna Bergren Miller in The Architect's Newspaper FabriKator blog.

When Page design principal Larry Speck suggested a catenary sunshade for the courtyard of the new GSA building in Albuquerque, his colleagues set about identifying precedents. “There were some really great devices that we looked at, but a lot were done in the 1960s out of heavy, monumental materials,” said principal Talmadge Smith. “We wondered if there was a way to do it in a lighter, more delicate way that would also introduce some warmth to the space.” The architects elected to build the structure out of western red cedar, which performs particularly well in arid climates. Comprising 4-, 8-, and 12-foot boards suspended on steel cables, the sunshade appears as a wave of blonde wood floating in mid-air, casting slatted shadows on the glass walls of the courtyard.

Read the entire post Page Floats a Cedar Sunshade in Albuquerque by Anna Bergren Miller, Architect's Newspaper, August 8, 2014.