FLASHBACK: WHEN STAGECO BUILT AN ICON Whatever happened to

“I showed Hedwig a picture of the Theme Building and asked him if it was possible to build something that would straddle a football pitch. If anyone could pull this off, it was Stageco.” WILLIE WILLIAMS

WHEN STAGECO BUILT AN ICON

Revisiting the company’s role in the ultimate in-the-round tour

Stageco’s colourful history is peppered with extraordinary, groundbreaking projects that have raised the bar for show design and presented the company with all manner of unprecedented technical challenges. Among the most defining of these projects was U2’s now-legendary 360° world tour which, in 2009, gave birth to an iconic, sci-fi flavoured creation known as The Space Station or, more commonly, The Claw.

The 360° design was conceived by Willie Williams and Mark, who first teamed up for Zoo TV, 17 years earlier. Their combined vision resulted in a sprawling, four-legged structure that spanned the width of an average stadium, underneath which Bono, Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr performed on an elliptical main stage linked to a surrounding B-stage runway via two automated tracking bridges.

Above and below: Test building in Werchter, early May 2009. Inset: One of the late Mark Fisher’s design sketches.

Contained within the eerily-clad superstructure was the biggest touring PA system on the planet, the most impressive video screen ever to grace a rock’n’roll stage, and a cigar-shaped obelisk, loaded with lighting fixtures, that speared the centre of the structure and took its overall height to a vertigo-enducing 51.8m. “I call it Star Trek because we’re going where no one’s ever been!” joked production director Jake Berry, who headed a permanent touring crew of 127.

Williams explained the concept: “With previous 360°, in-the-round shows, you’ve always ended up with legs that make it look like a bandstand, along with the inevitable sightline issues. My breakthrough moment came in 2006 when I realised that instead of making the set smaller, we should make it so big that it becomes part of the stadium, while the performance area is very small and completely disconnected from the feet. The aim was to design a structure that didn’t have any sightline kills.”

Top: Hedwig De Meyer, Dirk De Decker & Hendrik Verdeyen. Middle: Patrick Martens, Johan ‘Bellekes’ Van Espen and Jeremy Lloyd. Above: Willie Williams, Mark Fisher and Jake Berry.

In his mind, Williams was visualising what turned out to be the futuristic Theme Building at L.A. International Airport and upon finding a photo of it, he was convinced that this was the shape on which to base a design.

Fortuitously, just as his thoughts were forming, Stageco’s Hedwig De Meyer arrived at a U2 show in Auckland, close to the end of the Vertigo tour. “I showed Hedwig a picture of the Theme Building and he said he’d seen it that day as he’d gone through LAX on the way. So I asked him if it was possible to build something that would straddle a football pitch. He chuckled and nodded ‘yes’! If anyone could pull this off, it was Stageco.”

Armed with the affirmative, Williams e-mailed Mark Fisher “who got it in one” and replied overnight with the first sketches of what was essentially the Theme Building in a stadium with a small stage in the middle.

“To be designing a U2 tour while we were still on the previous one is a first for me but

Lift off: the tour made its début at Camp Nou Stadium in Barcelona, Spain on June 30th 2009.

it’s also unprecedented for us to run with one design concept from the start and not deviate,” said Williams. “Once presented with the basic concept, the band gave their approval to proceed further. This was always going to be a very expensive proposition but you open up 20-30% more seats per venue by doing it this way, and that’s very enticing for any promoter or accountant.”

PROGRESSING THE DESIGN

Working from Fisher’s sketches, the first technical drawings were done at Stufish in early 2008 and, as Williams said, “apart from the fine detail, you wouldn’t be able to tell much difference between those and what we now have”.

He added: “It started off looking like the Theme Building and whenever it began to look like something else, we moved in a different direction. And now, it doesn’t look like anything you’ve ever seen before.”

Despite early misgivings within the team about the practical impact of the design, Jake Berry took a positive view: “I knew that touring this monstrosity would be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, but I was convinced we’d find a way to make it happen. So I visited all the main stadiums that had been earmarked and advanced the tour about 18 months ahead of time because it was crucial to see how our 400 tonnes of production would affect those venues.”

BUILDING IN WERCHTER

After a cost study was completed, Fisher handed the technical design job to Jeremy Lloyd in May ’08, and he began a long and fruitful dialogue with Stageco, leading to the company beginning work on the construc-

tion at its test build site in Werchter. Over the course of the test building, the expanse of the structure became a target for local sightseers and the media, with Stageco’s president earning celebrity status on Belgian TV!

At each venue, Stageco built its 30m high, 190 tonne steel superstructure in 4.5 days, and added 176 tonnes of production (PA, lights, 52 tonnes of video screen, the cigar, winches and automation) in a 24-hour production load-in, and lifted it 28m in the air with a crew of 16.

“The superstructure spans 64m across its bases and is built entirely from brand new elements apart from the lifting tower support which comes from our Twin Tower system,” insisted De Meyer.

Starting in February, manufacture of the structure elements was either conducted in-house at Stageco or by sub-contractors who were given a set of 3D models containing precise information for the production of the four legs from very large steel tubes. The structure was all held together by ultra heavy duty 80mm diameter pins – more than twice the normal size – each weighing 15kg.

“All of the specialist companies we approached advised us not to build this with four 150 tonne cranes because, as the weight shifts so quickly, it would be virtually impossible to expect four crane operators to simultaneously lift all four corners with precision timing, which is exactly what it required.”

The answer was to phase the building between smaller cranes and a different industrial solution. Dirk De Decker researched lifting methods and contacted the Madrid office of US-based Enerpac, a leader in the world of heavy lifting and hydraulic equipment.

“Their computer-controlled self-climbing units were newly-designed for us and arrived in Werchter in May,” he said. “We start the build with the lifting towers. The top grid is assembled on the ground and then lifted 4.8m with three cranes, at which point we begin building the legs which extend beneath our lifting towers.

“The Enerpac units work with hydraulic jacks and take over to slowly raise the structure so that the build can be completed, after which our lifting support is removed, leaving the structure ready for placement of the cigar through the centre void in the top grid with a six tonne motor. The lifting process alone requires 16 trucks of equipment.”

“It’s an incredible feat of engineering and the load-in/out is like no other,” said Berry. “Here, the method requires a steel load-in, a steel load-out, a production load-in and out, and another steel load-in and out, because

we have to take eight trucks of the steel lifting system away. That in itself is a huge undertaking and that’s before you start getting everything from A to B as efficiently as possible.”

Stageco produced three identical leapfrogging steel systems for the tour, each one transported on 38 trucks between venues. Project manager Dirk de Decker was responsible for the co-ordination of the developments and logistics of touring these systems, with Johan ‘Bellekes’ Van Espen, Patrick Martens and Hendrik Verdeyen heading the three individual (blue, red, green) crews. They respectively worked alongside site co-ordinators Toby Fleming, Robert Hale and Seth Goldstein.

U2 launched their 360° world tour on June 30th 2009 at Barcelona’s Camp Nou Stadium with a peak performance worthy of the crowd’s feverish reaction. Their mix of new material from No Line On The Horizon and former glories was pitched perfectly to ensure that music, art and architecture remained the best of bedfellows.

The tour came to an end two years and 109 shows later, after playing to a total audience of 7.27 million. It currently stands at No.2 in the list of the all-time most successful concert tours and, naturally, Stageco remains extremely proud of its association with both the band and this technical marvel.

AFTERMATH

But what happened to the three structures after U2 played their final show of the 360° tour? While one was scrapped and another is currently based in Stageco’s back yard in Werchter, the third Claw found its way over to Utah, USA.

In the town of Draper, Utah, Brent Andersen, the founder and CEO of Loveland Living Planet Aquarium read an article about U2’s original wish for these stages to be reimagined as community gathering spaces. Placing a model of the Claw on the aquarium’s existing expansion site, Andersen and the aquarium staff realised one would fit perfectly.

Andersen said plans for an expansion originated in late 2014. He wanted a learning centre that could expand the aquarium’s educational mission: “Something that had elements for everybody, whether they were two or 92 years old.” Part of that, he added, was some type of iconic, eye-catching monument that served a real purpose.

Loveland co-ordinated with Stageco, Live Nation and Atelier One to work on the financial and practical aspects of giving The Claw a new home and implement the minimal structural modifications needed for one to become a permanent structure, looming over the site’s Rio Tinto Kennecott Plaza which accommodates an 80,000 square-foot learning centre.

“This big structure, the Claw, it’s very aesthetically pleasing,” said Ari Robinson, the aquarium’s creative director. “And I think it really does inspire that awe and wonder in people.” U2.com thelivingplanet.com