While the work of most structural engineers is focused on the creation of the utilitarian buildings and structures that our communities live in, work in, and traverse every day, not all structures are quite so practical. Just as close collaboration between an architect and structural engineer makes great buildings possible, bringing sculptures, monuments, festival pavilions, kinetic structures, and other types of large-scale architectural art to life often requires a structural engineer who can think as creatively as the artist who first envisioned them. Far from “basic,” such projects bring out the best of what our profession is capable of, often involving high-end analysis, untested materials, structural optimization, and careful consideration of constructability and creative development of construction documents.
Come hear from SEAONC colleagues Steve Ratchye and Erik Kneer who have made these projects a core part of their practice, as well as artist and metal worker Marco Cochrane, creator of R-EVOLUTION, now on display at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza. This special event will be hosted in a unique venue, Oakland’s The Crucible, where many such projects are brought from vision to reality by the same hands that drew the initial sketches.
Note: The Crucible is a short walk from West Oakland BART. For those interested, volunteers will be available to escort attendees back to BART after the event.
Program
Speaker Bios
Erik Kneer, SE, LEED AP is the Strategic Initiatives Leader for GPLA based out of San Francisco. Erik has specialized in large-scale art installations over the course of his 25 year career and has designed, engineered, and helped to build dozens of public art from the Black Rock Desert at Burning Man to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and beyond! He is passionate about solving unconventional problems for clients in creative ways. His experience spans multiple market sectors and building types with emphasis on integrated practice, sustainable design, and off-site construction techniques. His focus on the latter two topics has led him to be an early-adopter and advocate for mass timber construction.
Steve Ratchye, PE, SE, RA, LEED AP is a Principal at Thornton Tomasetti in San Francisco, where he has practiced for 20 years as a licensed Structural Engineer and Architect. In addition to his core expertise in higher education and residential projects, Steve has collaborated on a number of sculptural projects, such as Rex’s Roar at the San Diego Zoo and the base isolated New Being at Sufism Reoriented’s Sanctuary. He has worked in Los Angeles and London in addition to the Bay Area, and he has worked with a wide range of structural materials. His passions in the field include sustainability and architectural expression of structure.
Marco Cochrane, born in 1962 to American artists in Venice and raised in Northern California, grew up immersed in the cultural and political movements of the era, developing a respect for oneness, balance, and the importance of feminine energy in confronting oppression and achieving harmony. In his 20s, he discovered sculpting on a dare and became a self-taught artist, spending over two decades capturing women’s chosen poses and expressions in clay and bronze. Inspired by Burning Man, he began enlarging his sculptures to monumental scales to magnify their emotional impact, driven by his belief that solving humanity’s crises requires balancing feminine and masculine energy in a global shift already in motion.
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