A new piece of public art will soon find its home on Reston’s Lake Thoreau. This towering, angular tree sculpture is called Arboris, and it’s the work of the South Lakes High School STEAM Team, which designed and built the concept from scratch.
Every year, the STEAM Team works together to create an original piece of artwork. The team, now in its 12th year, operates as an after-school club led by teacher Marco Rando. Throughout the school year, students go through a design review process to get their concept approved, then use concepts of design, physics, architecture, and beyond to make their design a reality.
“The focus is on the arts, but when you’re putting something out in the public and it has to withstand the forces of nature, then you’re getting into mathematics. You’re getting into engineering,” Rando says. “You need to take all these things into consideration.”
Creating a Design
At the beginning of the year, students created 10 design concepts for the sculpture, which they presented to members of Public Art Reston and the Reston Association. The design review board narrowed the choices down to three, and the students voted for the final design.
This process mirrors what a professional artist would go through to get a project approved, and it helps students engage with the community and practice public speaking skills.
“There’s all these skills that STEAM Team and teaches you that you don’t really learn from just a regular class, like we have presentations to the [design review board] in order to get our design passed, in order to be able to put it up on the lake,” says Connor Kehde, a 10th grader on the STEAM Team. “We talk with a lot of people about what we’re creating in order to get their support.”
This year’s winning design, originally titled One, Two, Tree, took inspiration from Reston’s strong community ties to nature.
Solving Problems
Once they had an approved design, it was time for students to get to work testing and building their design. Students then had to make sure the work could withstand the elements, that it would be able to support itself on the platform, and figure out a way that it could be constructed on the lake.
“This year is the most intense engineering challenge to date. This is their 10th sculpture, and engineering-wise it is just an exceptional challenge to have problem-solved,” Rando says.
Using physics, design, and architecture concepts — and some help from area professionals like architect Ed Climo — the students tweaked their model until they came to a final design that worked.
“Trees themselves are very structured in how they actually work. Even though they seem very irrational, they’re not,” Climo says. “So [the students] had to find a way to rationally build this thing through the exploration of trying different ideas.”
In its final form, Arboris is approximately 14 feet tall and is composed of wood branches that point outward from one central “trunk,” with a sturdy base to support its weight.
The STEAM Team will host an opening at 6 p.m. on June 5 at South Lakes High School to present the final sculpture to the community. Later in June, an installation team from the Reston Association will bring pieces of the sculpture out on boats to reconstruct it on the spillway.
The installation is tentatively set for the week of June 17.
Feature image of Arboris by Maggie Roth
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