KRB Equipment was selected by The Fort Miller Group to perform the incredibly intricate bending needed for the PIER 55 project. The KRB Bar Form 1020 was used to fabricate each piece, no two pieces being the same and the precision had to be spot on.
The construction story behind Little Island began with the challenge of translating the unique sculptural design from Heatherwick Studio into an executable engineering project. Engineering firm Arup developed the geometries for the park’s unique pot structures using 3D parametric scripts, generating digital models and deliverables that fed directly in to guiding the project’s fabrication and manufacturing processes.
The magnitude of the Little Island project presented the Fort Miller group with both a new research challenge as well as a rare opportunity to combine the efforts of its sister companies, steel fabricator FAB3 and foam formwork fabricator Access Anvil, for one united effort. FAB3 produced the steel plates used to connect the pots together, while Access Anvil Corp designed and fabricated the 220 unique foam forms and 45 column head molds for the pots.
With only a three-inch margin of error allowed for placement of each pile, Weeks Marine led an incredibly precise pile driving undertaking to install the foundational support columns—piles—of the park. They installed 267 pre-cast concrete piles over the course of ten months, with a five-month break in between to allow for fish migration seasons.
Half of the piles serve as supports for the ‘tulip pot’ modules that comprise the surface structure of the park, with each pot made up of 4-6 concrete ‘petals,’ all sitting on a central column head. All pot and column head components were fabricated by the concrete manufacturing Fort Miller Company based in Greenwich, NY, whose projects typically include bridges, retaining walls, and highway products.
Fort Miller evolved from a company founded in 1939. Operations began in a small wood-frame building in Fort Miller, NY on the Hudson River, 12 miles east of Saratoga Springs. To this day, the business remains a family-owned, privately-held company under essentially the same ownership that purchased the business in 1948. Throughout the past 65 plus years, Fort Miller has expanded its offerings to become one of the most diversified precast concrete producers in the country.
Source information www.littleisland.org