What is three stories high, built with 50 tons (45 metric tons) of steel, fits inside a museum, is structurally complicated and designed for children? A Climber, of course. This wild maze of tube steel with pieces weighing as much as 5,000 pounds(2,250 kg) is currently under construction at the Children’s Museum of Phoenix.
Although the museum’s original educational and physical concept of the Schuff Perini Climber remains intact, what morphed is the scale. It gradually evolved into a gigantic steel labyrinth that involves Perini Building Co., Las Vegas, construction manager; Schuff Steel Co., Phoenix, the steel fabricator and erector; Ganymede Design Group Inc., Phoenix; Bakkum Noelke Consulting Structural Engineers, Scottsdale, Ariz.; Draft-Tech Inc. Structural Detailers, Windsor, Ontario, Canada; and 37 other subcontractors and vendors.
“The concept behind the behemoth climbing structure is to unleash creativity, get kids moving and allow them to take perceived risks in a safe environment. For a young child between 3 and 4 feet [0.9 and 1.2 m] tall, conquering a 37-foot- [11-m-] tall tangled web of solid steel is conquerable, but still quite a feat,” said designer Kevin Winters,principal of Ganymede Design Group.
“The climber is comparable to erecting a complicated building. There is no repetition and every piece of steel is placed at an angle,” said Todd Brush, lead project coordinator for Schuff Steel Co. With a portfolio of sports arenas, hospitals and a 500-foot- (152-m-) tall replica of the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas that Schuff and Perini constructed,Brush said, “The Climber is one of the most intricate structures Schuff has built.”
“The impetus to move forward on such a colossal undertaking, especially for a young museum like ours, was Dave Schuff, chairman of Schuff Steel Co.,” said Nancy Stice, director of exhibits for the Children’s Museum of Phoenix. “We invited Mr. Schuff to take a tour of the project, which he patiently did dodging rambunctious, loud children with every step. After the tour Mr. Schuff said matter-of-factly, ‘So I guess you want us to build the Climber?’”
That single sentence sealed with a handshake catapulted in motion an iconic museum piece.Schuff is donating its professional services, steel fabrication and erection, and all 50 tons of steel on the project. In addition, Perini is donating project management, construction expertise, on-site supervision, and lined up more than 30 subcontractors and vendors to donate time, materials, or both. Approximately 75 percent of the project is donated.
Design
True to the museum’s philosophy, the Climber uses ordinary objects in weird, crazy ways. Destination points on the structure include a claw-footed flying bathtub with steel reinforced wings, a rocket ship with real car door fins powered by sand buckets posing as rocket thrusters, a wooden row boat with dangling legs, a slanted attic rooftop looming28 feet (9 m) above ground level to venture out on, and an 18-foot (5-m) long plank that leads ta school of flying fish made from recycled items. With four options to ascend the Climber, children can crawl, walk, zigzag and climb on tube steel columns and beams, a water park slide lined for traction, a ladder, plywood ramps, and see through fiberglass grating. Accessible from the third floor of the museum is an attached observation deck for non-Climbers to experience the journey. To secure the under-aged explorers, the entire structure is draped in stainless-steel woven wire netting (the same material used in zoos). Another parent pleasing safety feature is that kids are observable at all times. There are no enclosed parts of the Climber to lose sight of a child.
Winters, Stice and a host of childhood experts collaborated on the concept. As in-kind contributions were secured from the building community the project’s scale increased exponentially. With a concept and contributions in place, the design andc onstruction team met weekly to plan the structure.
Engineering
“Envision starting out with a pile of Pick-up-Sticks. Unlike other structures there is no inherent structural form to balance beams and columns on—establishing stability was a major challenge,” said Fred Noelke, principal of Bakkum Noelke Consulting Structural Engineers.
Because every piece of steel is placed at a angle, each had to be input into a computer model using RISA structural software to determine the numerical analysis. Loading the structure with all of its one-of-a-kind appendages (bathtub, boat, rocket,gang plank, etc.) was equally difficult. Calculations included determining each appendage’s weight, its center of mass and how it interacts with the entire structure, all while taking into account bouncing bodies. Although the bounce effect might be thrilling for adventurous children, from an engineering standpoint it would create too much vibration transferring to different parts of the structure. To reduce the bounce effect, engineers stiffened up elements directly supporting each appendage. A real bounce test prior to children for fine tuning.
Planning
Building Information Modeling was integral to the success of the project. Without BIM and other technology, the structure would have been too cost prohibitive to plan and build.
Working closely with Bakkum Noelke and Draft-Tech, Brush spent more than 400 hours in putting every steel piece into AutoCAD. Brush’s model shows every single detail of the project with each piece of steel plumb to the next. In addition to making sure the structure was, in fact, erectable, Brush was charged with the responsibility of guaranteeing that it could fit inside the museum and that it could be built in such a confined space. A 12-foot- (4-m-) wide by 7-foot- (2-m-) tall wall opening was cut into the museum’s atrium where the structure is being erected.
All 50 tons of steel fit through this one gap. This vastly impacted the design, created more assembly and added roughly three times the number of connections. The largest steel tube member able to fit through the opening is 34 feet (10 m) long by 9 feet (3 m) wide with the largest piece weighing 5,000 pounds.
Draft-Tech, which donated all of its services on the project, used Schuff’s AutoCAD model as the basis for its complete 3-D model built in Tekla Structures software.
Schuff and Draft-Tech worked through hundreds of connections and established accurate measurements for each piece of steel fabricated. Ninety-five percent of the structure is bolted to avoid on-site welding inside the museum.
Once the steel was erected, Perini and its subcontractors added the Climber’s super-sized appendages, plywood, fiberglass grating and slide flumes covered in a non-slip rubber lining, paint, and enclosed the finished piece with stainless-steel woven wire netting.
The Schuff Perini Climber grand opening date is still under wraps, but when it arrives, the Valley’s youngest citizens are in for a wild surprise.
Climber at the Children’s Museum of Phoenix
Construction manager: Perini Building Co., Las Vegas,
Steel fabricator and erector: Schuff Steel Co., Phoenix
Exhibit design: Ganymede Design Group Inc., Phoenix
Structural engineer: Bakkum Noelke Consulting
Structural Engineers, Scottsdale, Ariz.
Structural detailer: Draft-Tech Inc. Structural
Detailers, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
