Kirigami-inspired shade structure wins the 2024 Forge Prize for innovation in steel architecture

The American Institute of Steel Construction has selected a shade structure concept situated in rural Arkansas as the grand prize winner of the $10,000 Forge Prize for 2024. 

Mile Zero, as the winning project is called, is designed to double as a hiking trail marker for the Razorback Greenway in Northwest Arkansas. It takes its inspiration from the art of kirigami, a Japanese paper craft whose technique has been shown to achieve ultrastrong performance in similar lightweight structures. 

Set against the picturesque naturalism of the hiking trail, the structure will display an inviting interplay of light and shadows and provide an upgraded rest area to the start of a trail that spans over 40 miles. It is designed to showcase the innovative Spin-Valence steel cutting method developed by Emily Baker of the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture.

The project came together as part of a collaboration between Baker and her colleagues Vincent Edwards and Edmund Harriss of the University of Arkansas; Princeton University’s Isabel Moreira de Oliveira; West Virginia University’s Eduardo Sosa; and local Fayetteville artist Reilly Dickens-Hoffman. The structure will be assembled with help from the St. Louis-based Hillside Fabricators.  

Hillside's Chief Structural Engineer, Tony Diebold, said: "Once [Baker] described the whole Spin-Valence concept to me, I thought it was pretty innovative and seems like it could be a really interesting structural piece--but also architectural."

"Arkansas is going to be the big winner in the long term," 2024 Forge Prize judge Reed Kroloff, also the dean of the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture, added to the winning selection. "We thought the shade structure was remarkably innovative in the way that it took steel and used it in such an interesting fashion, with the folding and stacking. [The jury] thought it had great promise for steel as a building material."

The winner was joined by two runners-up finalists Juan Jose Castellon of Rice University and Chen Xia from MUSUMANOCO. 

The Mile Zero design team will next reprise their winning presentation on March 20th as part of the Architecture in Steel specialty conference in San Antonio.

The 2024 Forge Jury was comprised of Kroloff, Samantha Flores of Corgan, and ARCHITECT editor-in-chief Paul Makovsky. 

Watch the final presentations and winner announcement in the video below.