The Dangrove Art Facility is a unique, 10,000 square meter structure which was purposefully designed and built to house the private art collection of Judith Neilson. The steel and concrete building also provides a flexible space in which to host events in a fully open interior Great Hall. Linking both sides of the Great Hall is a steel and bowstring truss bridge.
Ronstan supplied our ARS6 compression struts and ARS2 tension bars and structural rods in order to make the architect’s design vision of “clean lines and aesthetic excellence” throughout, a reality. It was an important goal to create the link between the spaces in the Great Hall using minimal materials and the bowstring truss bridge allows this. The project engineering company, TTW, commented on the construction of the bridge, “Tension rods and compression struts are attached to a mild steel deck comprising back to back steel angles and steel universal column sections supporting brushed and etched stainless steel decking plates. Cantilevering off the deck is a frameless glass balustrade with bespoke stainless-steel handrails”.
Ronstan was selected to supply the compression struts and tension bars not only for the high quality and high load-rating of the products but also for our expertise. Ronstan was able to assist the fabricator by means of accommodating the demands of the engineers and tailoring product to fit slightly offset cleats which required rotating pin connections.
The complete resulting structure was the recent winner of the Australian Steel Institute Award for a large project.
All Images © Ben Guthrie, The Guthrie Project