Sculptural not sculpture ?
This sinewy totemic beauty currently stands guard outside the new northern entrance to the Royal Academy, promoting a terrific exhibition of the architecture of Renzo Piano.
Deliciously sculptural, but not a piece of sculpture, it is a full-size GRP replica of a cast steel structural member called a Gerberette...the real thing a precisely tailored 10 ton super-cantilevering knuckle responsible for enabling the football pitch free-span floors of that heroic palace of culture, the Pompidou Centre.
I first encountered the gerberette almost 45 years ago, standing in the raw belly of the Pompidou with my fellow RCA students, listening to Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Peter Rice, the three musketeers primarily responsible for it's creation, describing with glee the thrill of creating such a majestic spirit-defining building.
Happy days....
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