The Entech Innovative Engineering team performed the technical design engineering and fabrication of a 1/3-scale Statue of Liberty for an extraordinary dining experience in Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Resort in Times Square, the beating heart of New York City. Unlike her counterpart in New York harbor, instead of a golden torch, Margaritaville’s Lady Liberty raises a margarita glass showing a path to all Parrotheads!
The massive icon incorporates within her torso an integrated banquette seating area with chandelier lighting and integrated flat screen televisions, all intended to give the look and feel of being with the Statue of Liberty.
One of the many important aspects of building a large-scale icon of this nature is to make sure the final product exceeds the expectations for it. In this case one very important aspect was the figure herself. Ms. Margaritaville Liberty would have to be unmistakable as related to her harbor counterpart, but from the client’s perspective, needed softer features as well as an adaptation to hold the glass instead of the torch. This meant developing a model in the digital environment that all stakeholders agreed upon which then went to be rendered in a 3D print for final approval.
With the “envelope” established, technical design and engineering defined and solved the challenges of how to build the icon of composites supplemented with steel armatures, successfully transferring the required forces throughout. There was not much room for an armature within the piece as the base and the largest part of the statue needed to be clear to place the banquette seating. Adding to the challenge was the requirement that the assembly would be shipped from Florida to New York City meaning that all elements of it would have to fit within a standard van trailer. Part of the design nuance was also to minimize the field seam work which required careful selection of parting lines.
Notwithstanding the skill and care in the engineering design phase of work, Entech performed shop load testing to verify the actual construction against the predicted behavior for it. This was particularly important as the Lady’s margarita LED screen glass weighs almost a ton! Rigging the icon into place and having it go together piece by piece until fully assembled was thought out and tested in the shop
Entech remains as one of the premier providers of large scale and complex structures and mechatronics, the unusual, the one-of-a-kind. Ms. Margaritaville Liberty stands tall as a testament.