Fiber Optic Fountain
Mixed Media, 30" h.

TOWERS — Illuminated Sculptural Structures

In 1983 the Kansas City chapter of the AIA held an artist/architect collaborative competition for a symbol for the City of Kansas City, the city of fountains. Stack conceived a 300' fiber optic light fountain located in the Missouri River at the site of the first settlement of Kansas City. In the late 90's Stack wanted to realize his dream fountain into a form that could, in fact, be built. A long-time devotee of R. Buckminster Fuller, Stack transformed Fuller's tetrahelical concept of the DNA helix into a free standing tower (Tower 1 below) capable of being built to incredible heights; 250' was deemed very doable by a structural engineering firm and confirmed by Novum Structures, a global manufacturer of architectural forms.

The products of Stack's investigation in the manipulation of the different properties of a tetrahelix are the forms seen in this collection of images. They vary in terms of complexity and form; they are virtually unlimited in the range of possible shapes and scale. These structures are not bound by the concept of "up" or "down"; they are flexible, strong, and after their having been evaluated by structural engineers and fabricators, like Tower 1, doable. It has always been part of this vision that the towers are fiber optically illuminated, technology that has come on line in the past few years. Conceptual illuminations of the forms are included in this presentation.