Concept artist Brian Peters set out to create designs for about 12 artistic sound barrier panels that would be part of about 700 installed along Route 28 near the Highland Park Bridge.
But the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation liked his concept — a blue undulating surface inspired by the highway’s location along the Allegheny River — so much that it expanded the work to include the entire 2-mile stretch of panels. The sound barriers with an artistic theme, which are currently being installed, are the first of their type in this region.
“It’s a huge canvas to work with,” said Peters, who works out of a studio in Carnegie. “It was a real challenge to figure out something this large.”
PennDOT initially set aside $30,000 as part of the $47.3 million redesign of Route 28’s interchange at the Highland Park Bridge to add the artistic element to the sound barriers. The department worked with Pittsburgh’s Office of Public Art to review proposals from about 30 artists across the country.
Projects across the world have used sound barrier panels that create complicated colorful visions such as the flight of a bird as vehicles pass by. But Sallyann Kluz, director of the Office of Public Art, said her group advised against that type of installment because it could be difficult to maintain.
After narrowing proposals down to three artists, officials chose Peters’ concept called “Ripples” after the flow of water on the Allegheny. The design was so appealing, said Mark Young, an environmental planner with PennDOT, that the department added $10,000 so all of the 12-by-8-foot concrete panels would follow the design.
It took a multistep process to transform Peters’ idea into the final product for installation along the highway in Aspinwall, Fox Chapel and Harmar.
Peters said he made an animation of the design and used that to create a model of four designs through 3D printing. He sent those images to Architectural Polymers of Palmerton, Carbon County, to create negatives.
Then, the negatives went to New Castle, where Faddis Concrete Products used them to manufacture the panels for delivery to the construction site.
The final product includes indentations as deep as 1½ inches on the surface to help create the illusion of moving water. Young said that those indentations actually help the barriers absorb even more sound than flat surfaces.
Although there are four basic images, Peters pointed out, crews can create a series of different images by rotating the panels so that they aren’t all facing the same way all the time.
Additionally, they will have a different appearance at various points because in some areas the walls are only feet high and in others they are 20 feet or higher.
“It’s an undulating surface I was working with,” the artist said. “The intent is that it is going to look different in different areas” because of the shading of the ripples.
Young said it was a real advantage to have a local artist involved because Peters has been easily able to attend meetings at the construction site as the panels are assembled. Even when he isn’t summoned, Peters said, he drives by the site “as often as I can” to watch the walls take shape.
As an art project, this was different from what Peters is used to, where he produces the final product himself. But giving that to others wasn’t difficult, he said, because of his previous career as an architect, where a design is almost always turned over to others for implementation.
Young has been pushing the state to include art elements in projects, but because this was the first time in this area, he said he didn’t know what to expect. He’s pleased.
“We really didn’t know what we would end up with,” Young said. “So far, it looks fantastic. It’s a unique project and we think we met our goal.
“We’ve gotten a lot of positive response to it so far. I see us definitely doing something like this again.”
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.