Metal Fabricating in a New Millenium

'The Bean' - officially Cloud Gate - in Chicago is a brilliant piece of sculpture. 

If you haven't had a chance to visit and walk under Cloud Gate, you have to make sure you do so when next you're in the Windy City. There are few enough opportunities to share a public experience like Cloud Gate with a hundred of your closest friends, and seeing Cloud Gate is one of the best examples of that experience.

But how the heck was it made? It can't have been cast that large, right? And if it's sheets shaped and welded, we'd see the seams, right?

Check out all the details of the production of Cloud Gate in a great article about Cloud Gate over at TheFabricator.com. It turns out it's a fascinating process involving way more hand-skilled work than I would ever have guessed. (In case the article disappears, I've uploaded it to Scribd.)

A less-detailed article about The Bean can be found on Outo Kumpu's website (They made the steel for the sculpture.) Again, I've uploaded this article, too.