The Salt Lake City Arts Council is excited to announce the installation of Strut, a new public artwork integrated into the 400 South Viaduct Trail connecting the Poplar Grove neighborhood to downtown Salt Lake City. Created by Seattle-based artist team Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan of Haddad|Drugan, Strut extends nearly 2,000 feet along the corridor, making it the longest continuous artwork in Utah to date. Through a sequence of artist-designed fence and concrete barrier elements, the installation transforms the viaduct into a vibrant public experience through color, rhythm, light, and movement while creating a bold visual identity for one of the city’s most important transportation connections.
From the beginning, the City envisioned this project as an example of how infrastructure can also create civic identity and a stronger sense of place. Haddad and Drugan were embedded directly into the project’s design process as part of the larger infrastructure team. Rather than functioning as an artwork added onto a project, Strut demonstrates how public art can be fully integrated into public infrastructure itself. The artwork’s stacked and staggered forms create an undulating rhythm inspired by the Wasatch Mountains, the flowing Jordan River, seasonal color shifts, and the vibrant colors of the Salt Lake landscape. Its palette also references the flock of wild peacocks that have become part of the identity of the Poplar Grove neighborhood.
The 400 South Viaduct corridor has long served as both a connection point and a divide within Salt Lake City. Railroad tracks and the parallel Interstate 15 corridor have historically separated the city physically, socially, and economically, particularly impacting residents traveling between the West and East sides. One of the central ideas behind Strut is the concept of stitching the two sides of the viaduct together through art, design, and infrastructure.
This project demonstrates what is possible when artists, engineers, fabricators, planners, transportation professionals, and community members collaborate from the very beginning of a project to reimagine a shared public space. Community engagement played a major role in shaping the artwork throughout the design process. Haddad and Drugan spent significant time listening to West Side residents to ensure the final design reflected the voices, experiences, and energy of the community. The Salt Lake City Arts Council is proud to support projects like Strut that elevate everyday infrastructure into something memorable, welcoming, and uniquely Salt Lake City. We are deeply grateful to the artists, the engineering and transportation teams, the Salt Lake Art Design Board, project partners, and especially the residents of Poplar Grove who helped shape this vision.
Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan’s Seattle-based art studio focuses on the creation of large-scale, conceptually driven placemaking art that explores qualities of light, color, magic, and wonder. The artists’ collaboration began in 2001 and has fostered a wide range of innovative site-specific public art commissions and art plans that emerge from a process of design team collaboration, community engagement, and research about the site’s community, history, natural environment, and functional requirements. The resulting multi-sensory aesthetic experiences are deeply integrated into the places where they are located and strive to reveal the cultural and environmental conditions that have inspired them.
The Public Art Program is a service of the Salt Lake City Arts Council. You can learn more about what we do at www.saltlakearts.org and www.saltlakepublicart.org
