ShowTex Hong Kong supplied 15 large set pieces, shaped like buildings, making up the Sky City to represent Singapore's vision for 2065. Of the 15 buildings, 10 were futuristic buildings, measuring up to 35m high and five of them illustrated existing landmark buildings of the Singapore skyline. Each had a footprint of about 5m by 5m.
This large scale project was a major undertaking for which ShowTex tackled multiple challenges. One of the main concerns was the lead time given to design, engineer and manufacture the giant fabric set pieces. Between confirmation of the project and delivery in Singapore there were only 12 weeks.
Another challenge that had to be overcome was that one building could not weigh more than 400kg, which was the limit of the fly system for each winch. This meant that during the engineering stage every component of the building had to be designed to be as lightweight as possible. ShowTex HK worked with lightweight aluminium frames and glass fibre rods to reduce structural weight of each building.
The designers of the "Sky City" had a clear vision of how the city had to be visualized and how it had to be deployed in the show. The buildings were stored in giant carts (the biggest one measuring 6 by 6m) that were pushed onto the stage. The 15 fabric Sky City Buildings were then attached to a large steel ring, which needed to be hooked into the fly system by the performers.
The deployment of the entire city had to happen in just a couple of minutes, virtually invisible to the audience, in order to create the illusion of the city magically appearing on stage.
(Jim Evans)
