CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Artist guilty over inflatable sculpture deaths

Reuters: "A London artist who created a huge inflatable sculpture that killed two women after it broke its moorings and flew across a park was found guilty on Tuesday of breaking health and safety rules."

7 comments:

AllisonWeston said...

Did no one see this coming? An inflatable suspended maze? C'mon! I am sorry to hear that this happened but didn't the designer consider the public's safety? This is reckless design!

Chris said...

I agree with Allison, but I think that the article is rather vague on the details. There is no mention of why the maze took off and left its moorings behind. This all goes to show, that, while design is definitely important, safety should always come first. Although the design sounds cool, there must have been other ways to accomplish the same thing. Also, the article says that the piece has traveled across the world, my question is why this hasn't happened before.

sarah benedict said...

That is so tragic. I am really surpruised that such a fatel design error occured - I though people were so paronid anymore that everything was triple checked. Although I do agree with Allison that this really did even sound very safe.

Katherine! said...

How did no one see this coming? If the exhibit had been around the world won't someone somewhere see that it was unsafe and put a stop to it? As Allison what a reckless designer, but also what a reckless supervisor for wherever this was installed.

Brooke Marrero said...

I agree that this should definitely have been seen as a potential hazard and been accounted for, but I'm also wondering why this was considered to be "breaking health and safety rules" only after the injury and deaths occurred, although the article stated that this piece had been shown around the world previously. Apparently, this was overlooked by everyone.

Anonymous said...

It baffles me that this has been around the world and everyone who approved its set-up thought, "Oh, nothing can go terribly wrong with this. What an excellent idea!" Sometimes I think people get too excited about the novelty of an installation and forget to think about safety issues.

Anonymous said...

I'm confused --- I think the article has left a couple of important details out though the bottom line is obviously unchanged. I find it absolutely shocking that such a thing could happen and think inquiry into the mistakes of the deisgner as well at the build team are certainly needed.