Student competition brings beauty, vinyl to parking ramp

Published On: November 1, 2012

[North Carolina State University College of Design] Raleigh, N.C.

A drab, unfinished parking ramp provided the inspiration for a team of professors in the College of Design at North Carolina State University to launch a competition among their students. The winning entry was a 15-panel mural called “The Fantastic Sky Race” that fuses images of local landmarks with world environment iconography. Covering two sides of the parking structure, the mural uses 20,445 square feet of printed 70/30 vinyl fabric mesh.

Installation required a custom-designed mounting system that uses taut stainless steel aircraft cable and carabiner clips positioned between banners. Each banner shares at least one vertical cable and the carabiners tie the fabric to the cable through grommets along the banner sides. The top and bottom edges of the banners are kept straight by ¼-inch-diameter galvanized steel rods that are inserted into fabric pockets sewn at each end. The rods extend beyond the fabric width by six inches on each side, producing a space of 12 inches between banners.