Sunsphere
Sign in to saveAlso known as Knoxville Sunsphere, Sunsphere Tower
The Sunsphere is a tall hexagonal steel truss structure located in World's Fair Park in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. It is topped with the gold-colored glass sphere that served as the symbol of the 1982 World's Fair. Directly across a man-made pond from the Tennessee Amphitheater, they are the only remaining structures from the fair.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- observation tower
- Country
- United States
- Located in
- Knoxville
- Material used
- steel
- Official website
- www.worldsfairpark.org/sunsphere
- Image
- Sunsphere 01.jpg
- Height
- 81.07
- Width
- 110.00
- Significant event
- 1982 World's Fair
Show 9 more facts
- inception
- 1982-00-00
- Commons category
- Sunsphere
- has facility
- restaurant
- number of elevators
- 3
- patronage
- 10800000
- architectural style
- high-tech architecture
- street address
- 810 Clinch Ave, Knoxville, TN 37902
- postal code
- 37902
- capital cost
- 4000000
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
9 sectionsContents
- Design
- History
- World's Fair (1982)
- Redevelopment proposals (1991-1999)
- Reopening and recent changes (2007-present)
- In popular culture
- References
- Further reading
- External links
The Sunsphere is a tall hexagonal steel truss structure located in World's Fair Park in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. It is topped with the gold-colored glass sphere that served as the symbol of the 1982 World's Fair. Directly across a man-made pond from the Tennessee Amphitheater, they are the only remaining structures from the fair.
==Design== Designed by the Knoxville-based architectural firm Community Tectonics, the Sunsphere was noted for its unique design in several engineering publications. It was originally to have had a diameter of symbolically that of the hypothetical diameter of the disc of the Sun. The tower's window glass panels are layered in 24-karat gold dust and cut to seven different shapes. It weighs and features six double steel truss columns in supporting the seven-story sphere. The tower has a volume of and a surface of .
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Sunsphere” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
On the map
3 mapped locations