The new Fever-Tree Bar at Edinburgh airport occupies a prominent location in the departure lounge. The bar design, comprising of natural sustainable materials and a dynamic sculptural installation, is reflective of the premium Fever-Tree product.

The project provides an eye-catching statement piece to promote a UK product to international market at the heart of the busy commercial space within the airport. The tree at the centre of the bar is the impressive result of the collaborative multidisciplinary design approach adopted to realise the client’s vision and provides a tangible visual connection to the brand.

The tree design made the most of 3D design techniques and modern computer numerical controlled (CNC) fabrication to create a complex yet natural structural form stabilised by interconnecting branches and aesthetic connections.

The complete tree canopy spans up to 6.6m in width yet occupies only a small area of floor plate maximising both the visual impact of the bar whilst maintaining the maximum usable floor space below the canopy.

The sectional design allowed a full-scale mock-up to be created in the fabricators workshop prior to delivery to site. The propping requirements and construction sequence was optimised off-site whilst the main-contractor progressed the site preparation. The project was on site for only 4 weeks.

The structure of the tree utilised 18mm birch plywood for strength and durability. The orthogonally orientated laminations of the material are optimal to resist the applied bending stresses of a curved and tapering section. The resulting section sizes were limited by slenderness as opposed to strength.

The overlapping of primary structural members combined with diaphragm structures and compression edge torsional restraints reduced the effective length of the primary structural members to optimise the use of material and achieve the natural open sculptural form.

The radial orientation of trunks and branch elements allowed the cantilever branches to be balanced by a connection to the opposing cantilever. This reduced member sizes and forces at connections allowing the use of a segmental structure that could be assembled and dismantled and brought into the airports departure lounge through regular good lifts and erected with minimal lifting equipment.

A collaborative approach to detailing was successful in creating structurally efficient connections that achieved the visual impact required from the project.

The technical understanding of the structural behaviour of the material was key to delivering the brief.