INNOVATION March-April 2022

F E A T U R E

R ob Shantz, owner and product manager of Area 58 Innovation Inc., is not one to shy away from a challenge. When an Alberta casino wanted a gigantic crown to rise out of its circular bar like an aluminum wheatsheaf, he built it. When a Vancouver developer asked for 166 illuminated flowers to grace its sales centre, he didn’t flinch. When an Australian artist wanted a huge solar-powered neon sign saying “This Beautiful Day” set up at the base of the Squamish Crag, he said sure, why not. But he also always called an engineer. Shantz started to search for the kind of engineers “who review things” almost as soon as he began to fabricate signs just out of high school, to make sure his creations, many of them very large and filled with neon, would stay where they were put. He has worked with Brian Lytton, P.Eng., principal and senior structural engineer for Peak Engineering Ltd. in Maple Ridge, since about 1999. WHERE ART AND ENGINEERING COMBINE Area 58 Innovation Inc. has a rather unusual website address: www.ufosmadehere.ca . But the UFOs they make are not the usual kind, built by strange creatures from another galaxy. Rather, they are complex and often immense installations, built in Coquitlam, that require equal amounts of artistic and engineering expertise to pull off. Robin J. Miller

Folly Electric by Alex Morrison. P hoto : b enjamin F enton

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