 Da Vinci of Debt calls attention to the rising costs of earning a college diploma and the fact that most students can’t attain the diploma without a crippling amount of student debt. The installation features more than 2,600 diplomas with the average cost of each diploma at $180,000. Da Vinci of Debt has been valued at $470 million dollars - $20 million dollars more than Da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” (his most expensive work). Currently, in the United States student loan debt is at an all-time high of $1.7 trillion. Self-Climbing Superstructure The Da Vinci of Debt, erected at Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall, was facilitated due to help from United Staging and Rigging's 4-tower self-climbing truss system and great care toward the historic architecture during the install. Time and Space Fabrication presented the team at United Staging and Rigging a rough design of conventional trusses and a 4-tower system. The maximum capacity for this particular tower system is 4000 lbs. per tower. USR designed the self-climbing superstructure to suspend the sculpture. A self-climbing grid is a system constructed out of truss that utilizes towers set in 4 corners with chain hoists to raise and lower the truss “grid”. “Self-Climbers” are used primarily for temporary outdoor applications such as large festival roof systems or when there are no hanging options above, which was the case in Vanderbilt Hall. Once the self-climbing truss grid was in place, the diplomas were hung by a dozen Time and Space Fabrication crew members using over 300 pre-cut pieces of 3/32” wire rope. Each cable was attached to a 18’ and 22’ truss circle. Each of the diplomas were attached individually. Diploma install took almost 8 hours. Challenges to Overcome Familiar with common challenges of an install, USR went headfirst into this project with their most dynamic team members to...
By Siobhan Gee
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UNITED STAGING & RIGGING
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