Skylight Frame, Apple Covent Garden Store

In London’s Covent Garden Apple Store, historic brick juxtaposes three iconic glass and stainless steel features: A forty-foot square skylight over the central core of the retail space, and two distinctive staircases.

As with all the Apple flagship stores, TriPyramid worked with the design, fabrication, and installation teams from the earliest stages to develop the critical details of the skylight structure. The aim for the skylight design was minimal structure with perfect Apple-product-aesthetic detailing: like watchmaking, but using one-ton parts. A three-dimensional truss was created from solid stainless steel upper chords and high-strength stainless tension rod lower chords. Intersections of the stainless steel members feature sharp corners and concealed fasteners. TriPyramid devised the sophisticated connection details to meet the structural requirements without any field welding.

Finally, TriPyramid used specialized machinery and fabrication techniques to manufacture the unwieldy truss members to exacting tolerances. The skylight structure was fully assembled in TriPyramid’s California facility to verify component geometry before shipping.