A phoenix built to fill the plaza
Phoenix Ascension is a wingspread figure at a 15 m span, made to be the single largest object in a plaza or festival ground. The scale is the point: a phoenix that size reads as an event in itself, drawing visitors across an open space toward it. The wings are engineered as one continuous spread rather than two separate panels, so the silhouette stays clean and the colour cycling runs uninterrupted from tip to tip.
Building a 15 m wing
The difficulty is the span. At 15 m the wings are the dominant surface on the piece, so they decide both the visual weight and the wind load, and the frame has to carry that area without sagging. We build the wings as steel ribbing with hand-painted feather panels, shaped so the curve holds its volume from the ground and from the windows of nearby buildings. The feather panels are made in sections that bolt together on site, because a single 15 m skin could not be transported or lifted as one piece.
Colour that cycles across the bird
The lighting is programmable, with LED colour sequences that run across the wings in a chosen order. A slow cycle suits a calm civic square, while a faster sequence suits a festival evening, and the programme can be changed without touching the structure. Because the colour is set in software rather than in the paint, the same phoenix can shift from warm gold to cool blue between events, which is what makes it reusable across a season.
Engineering the 15 m span
As a bespoke XL-CU build, the phoenix is engineered to your site wind zone, with load calculations and fire certificates supplied per shipment. The base is a ground anchor sized to the 15 m span and fixed to hardstanding, and the foundation detail is issued before production. The piece is built in segments for standard road freight and assembled on site, with the wings as the largest assembled parts.
Anchoring the span to hardstanding
The wings are the dominant surface, so the buyer must confirm the site wind zone before we issue the base drawing and size the anchor to the span on hardstanding. The wings ship as the largest segments and bolt to the body on site so the spread holds its curve. The colour is set in software, so the venue can re-programme the cycle between events without touching the frame.
