Covestro polycarbonate protects engineering art installation at London’s V&A

An art installation at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) showcasing extraordinary feats of engineering features a central element produced using polycarbonate sheets from Covestro.

The sheet is used as part of a pavillion in the central garden of the museum, which is inspired by the forewing shells of flying beetles known as ‘elytra’ and constructed using a novel robotic production process using Kuka robots.

Covestro supported this architectural installation by supplying its Makrolon UV solid sheets. Covering an area of over 500 square meters, the eight millimeter-thick, transparent sheets convey a sense of lightness without distracting the observer from the design of the individual elements.

Durable and weather-resistant canopy

Covestro says that the Makrolon UV sheets can be adapted to the individual fibre composite cells of the beetle-inspired design and offer high impact resistance and good weather resistance.

The pavilion was designed by Architects, Achim Menges and Moritz Dörstelmann, Civil Engineer, Jan Knippers, and Climate Engineer, Thomas Auer, whose aim was to explore the integration of biomimicry, robotics and new materials in architecture.

The pavilion was created using a novel manufacturing technique involving industrial robots that was developed at the University of Stuttgart.

The interactive exhibition will be expanded continuously over the course of the museum’s Engineering Season, through November 6, in response to anonymous data captured by sensors in the canopy on how visitors move underneath it.