In addition to a swooping, stepped concrete and sloped stainless-steel roof-line, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Kansas City, Mo., features a radial glass atrium that hangs on finely tuned steel cables. The privately funded, $413-million job is set to open Sept. 16 after more than a decade of planning, design and construction.
Locals have likened architect Moshe Safdie's design to the Sydney Opera House—or to a pair of armadillos. The atrium was envisioned to resemble a cello's strings fanning over a bridge and fret-board. The cables span the 300-ft-long, 105-ft-wide glass lobby to support 48,300 sq ft of high-performance glass panels, each roughly 1.5-in. thick. To keep the ceiling and walls from caving in, a series of 27 threaded rods and corresponding cables are tensioned to an average 400 kips, or 400,000 lbs, creating the effect of a 250-mph wind load as they pull against the building superstructure.