At Hescott Engineering’s Falkirk facilities, the hum and sputtering of welding machines and the screech of metal being ground paid the cold no heed.

The biggest hurdle arose not from the freezing temperatures, but from an architectural audacity – the sweeping, sensual curve demanded of the roof.

It was a geometric defiance that even the software programs used to digitise the designs simply refused to compute. Like abstract artists introducing their bold visions, the engineers grappled with convincing skeptical ones and zeroes to allow the metal of the purlins to twist in gravity-mocking arcs.

The purlin-impasse was resolved through ingenuity and sheer bloody-minded persistence. With the digital realm bent to their will, Hescott’s craftsmen proceeded to cut solid steel into 6,000 distinct pieces – each column, truss and beam imbued with a graceful, structurally-poetic curve. What had threatened to be an impossibility was now taking sculpted form, piece-by-piece.