PLUS was a collaboration between architects Jestico + Whiles, lighting designers Studio Fractal, and Bolon, a Swedish design company known for its innovative flooring, created for Clerkenwell Design Week 2024. The installation took over the Clerkenwell courtyard shared by Jestico + Whiles and Bolon.
The installation took the form of a spatial sculpture made of timber, supporting hundreds of plus-shaped tiles created out of offcuts from Bolon’s flooring production process. Visitors were able to walk through the sculpture, interacting with it and even reassembling it.
The PLUS motif emerged in part from our collaboration with our neighbours, Bolon – by working together, we aimed to create an artwork that would exceed the sum of its parts.
As night fell, the sculpture transformed into an immersive light installation, with lighting provided by Architainment and designed by lighting designers Studio Fractal.
Studio Fractal’s immersive lighting animation themes were inspired by visions of the fragile beauty of the natural world, including stars in the night sky; dappled light through a forest canopy; kelp fronds swaying underwater; an ice cave within a glacier; and clouds moving gently against a clear blue sky.
These carefully selected colours of light were applied to the timber and tile sculpture, exploring the tension between geometry, negative space and texture. By immersing themselves in the installation, viewers could explore the ever-changing relationship between perspective and materiality.
On the night of the launch party, heavy rain created new reflections of the lights around the courtyard, adding a further unexpected dimension to the experience and serendipitously amplifying the installation’s theme of natural cycles within nature.
Sustainability was at the heart of the project from the start, and it was designed with a pre-assigned afterlife in mind. Following its deconstruction after CDW, the timber from the project was used to create a new pavilion in Coal Drops Yard, Kings Cross, as part of the 2024 London Design Festival. With the help of design studio Flimsy Works, students aged between 15 and 18 designed and built the pavilion as part of STORE Projects’ 2024 Summer School, experimenting with joinery techniques and exploring ideas of repair and reuse.
