Category: Installation

Fosse Park Play Wall

Fosse Park Play Wall

Leicester

The UK’s first vertical activity wall, complete with a rubber floor, informed by a series of workshops.

Clients: The Crown Estate, Macgregor Smith

A large scale outdoor installation at Fosse Park in Leicester commissioned by The Crown Estate that included a graphic wall, a rubber floor design and a 15 metre window design for the UK’s first vertical children’s activity area. The colourful installation welcomes children and adults to the space by filling the area with positivity in the use of local cultural references and a warm and upbeat colour palette.

Image shows the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.
Image shows a child playing on the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.

Commissioned by the Crown Estate, the brief was to bring some much-needed life and excitement for young people to the otherwise exclusively retail space of the new Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.

Image shows the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.
Image shows the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.

The designs had to be informed by the local area, in particular the wildlife and cultural history. In addition to our own research series of workshops were organised with two local school and an older peoples' social group. The intention of the workshops were to explore these themes in different ways with people who had grown up in the area.

Image shows the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.

The workshops generated many of the themes used in the designs, from the creatures imagined by the school children through to the industrial machinery that the older people all mentioned as being a factor in so many of the local peoples lives.

Image shows the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.

Also referenced in the designs are the pipework and barrels of Everards Brewery which stood on the site until it was redeveloped.

Image shows the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.
Image shows the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.

Macgregor Smith developed the idea of the vertical play wall in order to maximise the play space available. We worked our ideas around the play wall, ensuring the designs were visible both up close for children on the play wall as well as further away for those passing through the space.

Image shows the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.
Image shows the children's activity area designed by Smith and Lewarne in collaboration with Macgregor Smith architects at Fosse Park shopping centre in Leicester.

The Process

Engaging the local community is something we enjoy doing as part of researching and material gathering. Working with local people is a great way to foster a sense of civic pride as well as generating interest in a project.

We organised a series workshops with two different school groups and an older peoples’ social group. The sessions gave us a greater understanding of the context we were working within as well as providing us with material for the visual language of the outcomes.

Secondary school students were given an introduction into working with a specific colour palette, creating patterns and paper cut compositions. They were also encouraged to create cropping devices inspired by Sister Corita Kent, enabling them to examine their work in a different way and to look for interesting compositions and unexpected things.

We projected managed all aspects of the installation. The wall graphics were produced and installed by WithPrint, our regular production partners who have a wealth of knowledge and expertise when it comes to these sorts of complex projects.

The floor was installed by DCM Surfaces who worked with us to create a palette of custom colours and made sure our complicated designs came to life underneath the play elements.

Art, Research & Adventure

Art, Research & Adventure

Bath

A installation commissioned to reflect the building's unique context and purpose.

Client: The University of Bath
Photography: Dom Moore

A permanent, building-wide installation responding to the meeting of culture and academia on the University of Bath's campus. The installation is encountered in many different places throughout the building, with each location presenting varying expressions of a common visual language.

Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.

The Edge was an arts and creativity hub informed by the context and research of the University of Bath, up until its untimely closure during the coronavirus pandemic. The Edge encouraged collaborations between the arts and research, providing a place where artists, audiences, researchers and academics can find new perspectives and fertile ground to showcase new thinking and ideas.

Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.

At The Edge mechanical engineers met artists interested in moving structures, architects work with the arts to shed new light on the nature of play and how architecture influences it, people bring together inventing and engineering expertise to create artworks of scientific complexity.

Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.

The Edge commissioned Smith & Lewarne because they wanted to represent these collaborations visually. The permanent installation is located throughout the building.

Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.

We utilised the collaborative nature of the building within the installation by developing an abstracted system where the images could be read across the different disciplines as a starting point for future conversations.

Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.
Image shows Smith & Lewarne's installation at the Edge Gallery in Bath, featuring artwork inspired by the intersection of art and academia at the University.

The unfortunate closure of the Edge has not meant the end of the building however, and the installation remains visible to visitors to the Students' Union who now occupy the building.

The Process

The process began with an invitation to explore the University's archives, with a particular focus on the architectural history of the campus. The Alison and Peter Smithson played a pivotal role in designing some key buildings on the campus and their unique place in British architectural history was something we were keen to acknowledge by incorporating imagery from certain records in the archives.

We also explored long-outdated text books and journals, scanning images and textures to feed into our image-making process.

A final source of visual material was the Internet Image Archive, a vast resource of out of copyright images from books published around the world. We searched for academic themes in the archive, pulling out the images which spoke to the material was gathered in the archives to add to a bank of visual material was then used to create the installation. The images were then put through a series of digital and analogue processes to give them a more unified look and feel. These processes included printing, rescanning, colourisation and halftone screening.

A series of graphic compositions were then created in response to each of the spaces the installation needed to occupy. Once the compositions were finalised some of the shapes were used to frame the images we had created.

Each space was unique and had different requirements. The windows still needed to let a lot of light through them, the cafe area needed to be food-safe and easily cleanable, the corridors needed to be robust enough to stand up to years of people brushing up against them and the atrium and stairwell spaces needed to have a greater amount of presence given their scale. To address these requirements needed a great deal of dialogue with the building users, as well as modelling and mock-ups.

We created 3D models of certain areas of the building, like the stairwells and atrium, while flat plans were sufficient for the windows and other spaces. Modelling like this enabled us to bring our intentions to life for the building users and confidently plan the installation with our production team WithPrint.

Arnolfini: New Rules

Arnolfini: New Rules

Bristol

A temporary typographic installation for one of Bristol's leading cultural institutions

Client: Arnolfini

Arnolfini has been a place for imagination and bold new ideas in Bristol since 1961. As Arnolfini entered a new chapter in 2018, they wanted to tear up the rulebook of what a centre for contemporary arts should be or look like.

Image shows the foyer area of the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol featuring a poster installation of text based posters designed by Smith & Lewarne, called Arnolfini: New Rules.
Image shows the foyer area of the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol featuring a poster installation of text based posters designed by Smith & Lewarne, called Arnolfini: New Rules.

New types of arts organisations are being imagined to respond to the ways in which culture is being produced and experienced. Arnolfini commissioned Smith & Lewarne to design a typographic installation based on a set of new rules for the entrance foyer of the centre.

Image shows the foyer area of the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol featuring a poster installation of text based posters designed by Smith & Lewarne, called Arnolfini: New Rules.
Image shows the foyer area of the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol featuring a poster installation of text based posters designed by Smith & Lewarne, called Arnolfini: New Rules.

We designed and installed our own set of typographic rules for this installation by over lapping each of them to open up a dialogue of how these rules could be re-interpreted by visitors to the centre.

Image shows the foyer area of the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol featuring a poster installation of text based posters designed by Smith & Lewarne, called Arnolfini: New Rules.