A RIDNE Pylon on a Mast That Was Already There

We did not put this mast up. The old steel lattice was already there and still carrying its load, so the job was to fit a panel to what was already standing. It is a common situation: taking a mast down costs more than adapting to it. After that the lattice sets every dimension and the drawing follows.

The panel is assembled from horizontal sections — composite trays with folded edges. Nobody lifts a face that tall in one piece: there is nothing to transport it on and no way to hold it from a basket. The sections go up one at a time onto a sub-frame clamped to the lattice, and the joint between them stays visible for good, so the seam goes in the gap between letters. Put it anywhere else and the cut line reads as a crack across the name.

The letters and the sunflower are dimensional, applied over the dark face. The name is set vertically, every letter turned a quarter turn. A short name survives that: five characters are taken in at a glance. A longer word breaks the format — it starts being read letter by letter, and from a moving car there is no time for that.

The lighting is external: floodlights on brackets off the side, aimed at the face. Internal illumination at that height turns the panel into a lightbox — more weight, more wind load, and power supplies inside a structure you can only reach with a lift. A floodlight on a bracket is serviced from the same basket, without opening the panel up.