LONDON LOVES: The Blue Whale @ Natural History Museum

In July 2017, ‘Hope’, the 25.2m Blue Whale was unveiled as the new centre piece of the new Natural History Museum. Replacing ‘Dippy’ the Diplodocus after 112 years, Hope greets all visitors of the grand entrance Hintz Hall exhibition.

The skeleton weighs 4.5 tonnes and is suspended from the existing Victorian wrought iron roof trusses by a series of V-cables. The engineering required to suspend this amount of weight is simply incredible and we take our hats off to the masters of lightweight structures - DDA Engineers. Due to the complexity and the flexible nature of the structure, DDA undertook a full 3D computer non-linear analysis and successfully lifted the whale into its final position of 1.45 m above the floor in a dramatic diving pose. What a feat!

We also worked with DDA on the Ham Yard Hotel, as they were the appointed Structural Engineers for that complex and very large project. We take our hats off to you DDA!

We often work on different exhibitions for the Natural History Museum and enjoy admiring the Hope installation whenever we can.