Pulse of Light

A large-scale art and light installation at the iconic Kingdom Centre Tower in Riyadh

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Structural Engineering

Sectors

Leisure and Entertainment

Location

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Client

Noor Riyadh

Architect

Artist: Yann Kersalé

Production: HAVAS Events, ComeAndDo

The art installation in Kingdom Centre Tower was part of the city-wide artwork 'Pulse of Light,' created for Noor Riyadh Festival 2022 by French artist Yann Kersalé. The show combined light, video and laser to create a dynamic and enveloping luminous flux across the city. The performance began at the hearth of Kingdom Tower, with a video projecting onto an invisible net in the void of the building, referred to as a 'necklace.' This gives the impression of a giant floating hologram.

Cundall’s structural engineering team in London developed the design for the invisible projection mesh screen. This was a temporary pre-stressed deployable fabric membrane structure, suspended in the 'necklace' of the Kingdom Centre Tower. Due to the high altitude and associated complexity of the installation utilising rope access, our design had to be as lightweight as possible. For this reason, Ultra High Molecular weight Polyethylene (Dyneema®) ropes were used to support and reinforce the ShowTex Cielorama fabric. These ropes are eight times lighter than steel wire for a given strength. The area of the fabric mesh screen assembly was 1600m², with the weight of 640kg which is just 0.4kg per square meter.

The fabric mesh was designed to be deployable and could be taken down in case of strong winds. Wind speeds were also monitored at all times by the technical production team. This was important to keep the fabric from overstressing and to not impose large forces on the building structure, which was not designed to support large scale artworks.

Key fact

The projection mesh screen was awarded two Guinness World Records for the largest and the highest mesh screen on a building.

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Head and sholders shot of Rasti wearing a dark blue shirt against green foliage

Rasti Bartek

Partner, Structural Engineering

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In 2021 we undertook the structural design for the highly successful artwork, Star In Motion at Noor Riyadh. This was an incredibly unique project to be involved in and difficult to live up to. We were therefore thrilled when we were approached to provide structural design for this art installation, which proved to be an even bigger challenge from a structural engineering point of view.