Kinetic Wind Sculptures

San Francisco, CA

When several kinetic art installations began showing a similar pattern of footing cracks, despite being seemingly overdesigned, questions arose about what had been missed. Fingers were pointed at materials, foundations, and workmanship. The real gap was between a design approach that considered only static loads and the dynamic forces that were actually at play. Capturing that gap required advanced analysis with accurate models able to replicate nonlinear material behavior and dynamic response.

At Kandou, we believe that no matter how sophisticated the tools we use, the story we tell must always remain clear and accessible. As the saying goes, if you cannot explain something simply, you do not understand it well enough. This philosophy guides our approach to projects like this one: using advanced analysis to understand the true behavior of structures and presenting the findings in a way that owners and stakeholders can follow with confidence.