From Tail­gate to Sta­di­um and New Sig­nage: New Bridge at Iowa State University

Col­lab­o­ra­tion on this project start­ed over a year before instal­la­tion. Work­ing with Sub­stance Archi­tec­ture and Henkel Con­struc­tion, our team con­sult­ed and pro­vid­ed bud­gets ear­ly in the pre-con­struc­tion phase based on ini­tial archi­tec­tur­al con­cept draw­ings and sizes. 

“With as large and high pro­file as this project was, it was impor­tant to make sure the right peo­ple were in the right seats for every­thing to move smooth­ly,” com­ment­ed Mike McK­eag, CEO at Lat­i­tude Signage.

Once award­ed the project, our design­ers, fab­ri­ca­tors, licensed elec­tri­cians, and installers got to work on every detail. Our Senior Project Man­ag­er, Jason Flathers, spent years as a licensed elec­tri­cian and has exten­sive instal­la­tion expe­ri­ence so he was the per­fect fit to lead this project. ​“This total team effort includ­ed under­stand­ing every aspect of the bridge con­struc­tion, get­ting input from our experts on elec­tri­cal and fab­ri­ca­tion, con­sult­ing with the GC and sub-con­trac­tors on design and prod­uct details, then cre­at­ing a detailed pro­duc­tion design that could go straight to man­u­fac­tur­ing. The end goal all along was effec­tive­ly built and illu­mi­nat­ed sig­nage that is effi­cient­ly installed in the field,” said Flathers.

The 50-inch tall chan­nel let­ters that read ​“Iowa State Uni­ver­si­ty” are face-lit and installed to 9‑foot per­fo­rat­ed pan­els that cre­ate the ​“walls” of the bridge. Every part of the sig­nage was designed with longevi­ty, effec­tive light­ing and mate­ri­als, and a smooth instal­la­tion in mind. From where the elec­tri­cal con­duit leads come out of each let­ter to the pre­cise weld­ed place­ment of mount­ing knife plates, matched to the let­ters, on the per­fo­rat­ed pan­el­ing. These let­ters are installed using knife plates; the loca­tions were metic­u­lous­ly tem­plat­ed from the let­ters. The per­fo­rat­ed pan­el­ing is notched and the knife plates are weld­ed on pri­or to installers arriv­ing on site with the let­ters. We worked with Archi­tec­tur­al Wall Sys­tems to coor­di­nate the notched loca­tions in their per­fo­rat­ed pan­els so that John­ston Machine Works could then pre­cise­ly weld the knife plates. Every weld matters. 

The four ​“I‑State” logos book­end this pedes­tri­an bridge on both sides cre­at­ing four times the school spir­it! The face-lit logos stretch nine feet tall and are installed on pre­cast concrete.