Culture

Guest Contributors – Vin and Priyanka Rathod

While there are many new developments taking shape as means to provide infrastructure for the rapidly growing multicultural community in the City of Sydney, the city is also seeing variety of adaptive reuse projects in old abandoned buildings e.g. Carriageworks at Eveleigh, where an old carriage repair workshop has been transformed into a Contemporary art centre, and Cockatoo Island where the Convicts, Industrial and Ship building precinct of the past attracts a lot of campers and art lovers now. One such recent project is creative reuse of the stations of St James and Museum.

The Conductors Project has transformed the disused display cabinets of these two very busy train stations into an exhibition space. Daily commuters, on their way to work or home, can engage in a cultural experience through displays by various emerging and established artists. Such creative reuse shows the potential of transforming a building that was primarily used for transport to also have an element of art and creative exchange.

Currently showcasing photography of Andrew Quilty, the cabinets of St James and Museum have many interesting upcoming exhibitions.

Text by Priyanka Rathod. Images by Vin Rathod.

Vin Rathod is an architect and a photographer. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from KRVIA, Mumbai and Master of Construction Project Management from UNSW, Sydney. Vin is an Emerging Member of Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) and works in Sydney, Australia. For Vin, each photograph is a design; a design for the subject, be it an art, architecture, city, or a sculpture. He thrives on creativity and imagination and is always developing new ideas. The photographs speak of his vision to see built-form as an artwork. A collection of Vin’s fine art photographs are constantly evolving as seen on his website Through Vin’s Lens

As an architect, Priyanka is very much interested in exploring designs with sustainable initiatives. After completing Bachelors of Architecture from KRVIA, Mumbai University, she did her Master of Architecture with major in Design from UNSW, Sydney. In her professional career, Priyanka has worked on variety of projects – urban and rural; commercial, institutional and healthcare both in India and Australia. Her volunteering initiatives include participation in the event organising team of Archikidz! Sydney 2012 held during Sydney Architecture Festival. Currently, Priyanka lives and works in Sydney enjoying her time between professional work and some personal initiatives including writing for Through Vin’s Lens

By Doug Duff, Founding Partner of Crystal, and Rob Mikula, a Senior Designer at Crystal

Water is a powerful tool. As an essential primal element, water tends to resonate with human beings who are often naturally drawn to it, especially when it is presented in a spectacular form. For artists, it is sculptural and highly versatile, and can create different movement, sounds, shapes and colours. For centuries artists have used water in their work to express themselves, and many examples of this can be found in the public realm. This is no different today, with contemporary artists using water as an expressive tool and taking advantage of the latest technology to create inspiring work.

Crystal, a world leader in water design and technology, has been collaborating with artists and helping them realise their visions since the company’s inception in 1967. It acts as a bridge between artists, architects and engineers, believing that fountains are a place where art, architecture and engineering graciously meet. Many of Crystal’s staff are artists themselves, and thrive on being able to converse with other artists and help bring their ideas to life.

Mark di Suvero

One artist that Crystal works with is Mark di Suvero. Born Marco Polo Levi-Schiff di Suvero in Shanghai, China in 1933 to Italian expatriates, he moved to San Francisco, California in 1941 with his family. From 1953 – 1957 di Suvero studied philosophy at the University of California, before moving to New York where surrounded by Abstract Expressionism, he focused all his attention on sculpture. Di Suvero is considered to be one of the most important sculptors of his generation, and his distinctive, large bold pieces can be found worldwide.

He was a founding member of the Park Place Gallery in New York, continues to be the subject of multiple exhibitions, and received the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from the International Sculpture Center. Crystal collaborated with Di Suvero in 2005 at the headquarters of Calpers (California Public Employees’ Retirement System), the US government organisation in Sacramento, California.

“It was interesting working with Di Suvero at Calpers headquarters in Sacramento.  He’d never worked with water before, so when conceiving the sculpture, named ‘Serendipity’, he came to Crystal with his initial design. We became heavily involved with crafting the sculpture, with Suvero’s idea being to create a kinetic piece involving water,” Duff explains.

Having never worked with water, Suvero was very open to ideas. This created room for in-depth consultation with the artist, including materials to be used, the part water would play and how the kinetic element of the sculpture could be made interactive with its viewers.

“Being an artist and musician myself, I suggested a stainless steel keyboard, with eight keys linked to eight water jets, with their water pressure creating movement when the public press the keys – the idea was refined with Suvero and can be seen on the finished piece. It’s a great example of how Crystal collaborates with artists, rather than an artist simply asking us to create what they are imagining,” says Duff.

Jaume Plensa

Catalan artist Jaume Plensa had his first exhibition in Barcelona in 1980. A significant part of Plensa’s production is set in the context of public sculpture, with works installed in USA, Spain, France, Japan, UK, Korea, and Canada. His sculptural work has gone through several stages developed largely with recuperation materials such as iron, bronze, and copper, and more recently constituents such as synthetic resin, glass, plastic, light, video and sound.

Crystal was selected by Emaar and architects SOM to work with Plensa on the development of ‘World Voices’. For the prestigious residential lobby of the Burj Khalifa, the artist created installation befitting the world’s tallest building.

To this end, Plensa created 196 reed-like sculptures with golden leaves. Cast in bronze and brass and plated with 18-carat gold, the ‘leaves’ are actually cymbals suspended on flexible stainless steel rods anchored in two triangular reflecting pools at ground level. There are 196 cymbals in total representing the 196 countries of the world.

Crystal developed custom technology that creates the right size, volume, and control of the droplets that fall approximately 60ft (18.2m) from the atrium’s gold-leaf ceiling onto 18 of the gold cymbals. The droplets fall through 1inch / 25mm diameter openings in the lobby’s atrium ceiling, and create a natural rhythm as they make contact with the cymbals below. The cymbals create a distinct timbre as they are struck by the falling water droplets, which the artist compares to the sound of water falling on leaves.

Crystal developed the gravity-fed water controls that create bigger, natural droplets.  Part of the test workshop run in Toronto studied the size and formation of water droplets as they hit cymbals below, from a height of approximately 60ft. “It sounds like a simple idea, and in fact it looks simple, but to generate the right sound at the time intervals dictated by Plensa, was challenging,” says Mikula.

Jo Schneider

Jo Schneider creates sculpture, public art and architecture. She is renowned for creating environments that are striking, engaging and memorable. She has a Masters of Architecture degree from UCLA Graduate School of Architecture, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from SUNY College of Ceramics, Alfred University.

Duff worked closely with Jo Schneider on Macy’s Court in Plaza Las Americas, Puerto Rico, where a giant kinetic sculpture slowly revolves as if buffeted by winds, evoking the historic sails of the galleons in which Christopher Columbus navigated. The project was part of a renovation and expansion of Plaza Las Americas, with artistic elements aiming to recreate the island as it was in 1493 when Christopher Columbus discovered it.

In front of Macy’s Court, on the first level, the fountain is filled with Schneider’s sculptures of the Island’s marine life. A manatee, a turtle and various fish, share the waters in an artistic vision of the wonders of the sea. Even though some of these depicted species are endangered, the idea is they will swim forever here.

Duff says he and Schneider created the concept together, with Crystal providing the water effects to compliment the sculptures, and a motor to operate the manatee’s flippers. “Crystal was present for all crucial parts of the project’s installation, ready to make any necessary adjustments,” he explains.

So what for the future? Both Duff and Mikula agree that technology such as submersible LED Lights, new water jets with endless choreographed possibilities will drive the work artists create with water. Duff cites Digital Rain Curtains, which fashion specially created shapes, colours and pictures with water and LED Lights, as well as jets and lights that enable water to dance to music. These effects can now even be created on a ‘smart’ level with the public being able to control fountains with devices such as Apple’s iPad.

Guest Contributors – Vin and Priyanka Rathod

From 3 ‘R’s of sustainable principles – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – ‘Reuse’ has most power of creating innovative and refreshing objects, that also have an embedded cultural value. Like inheritance from our ancestors, the reused objects have a story, making them very special, unlike mass produced things we buy everyday. This is why the installation Waste Not by artist Song Dong is one of its kind. And the fact that it has been housed under Carriageworks - a Waste Not, modern cultural space created by reusing the old Eveleigh rail yard in Sydney – makes it extraordinarily unique.

Waste Not is translated from Wu jin qi yong: anything that can somehow be of use, should be used as much as possible.

From paper bags to leather bags, bowls to bottles, bird cages and empty boxes, Waste Not is a massive collection by the artist’s mother, either out of fear of shortage or to reuse them as something else or because it reminded her of her deceased husband. The art compelled all visitors to feel the daily life of a whole generation of Chinese people, and question the everyday waste we generate today.

Televisions, record players and radios … the collection had it all. We overheard a visitor telling her friend “Doesn’t that bring back memories?!”

Presence of a home in the centre as a main focal point of the display, enhances the domestic nature of the collection, and ties it all together. The efforts of assembling, disassembling and transporting the house, over and above all the collected items, is well worth it.

Carriageworks, as a reused space, forms a perfect backdrop for the art installation. A great example of how architecture can add value to art.

Launched during Sydney Festival last month, Waste Not is on display until March 7th at Carriageworks. It is a perfect time to explore Carriageworks if you haven’t done so already.

Images by Vin Rathod, text by Priyanka Rathod.

Vin Rathod is an architect and a photographer. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from KRVIA, Mumbai and Master of Construction Project Management from UNSW, Sydney. Vin is an Emerging Member of Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) and works in Sydney, Australia. For Vin, each photograph is a design; a design for the subject, be it an art, architecture, city, or a sculpture. He thrives on creativity and imagination and is always developing new ideas. The photographs speak of his vision to see built-form as an artwork. A collection of Vin’s fine art photographs are constantly evolving as seen on his website Through Vin’s Lens

As an architect, Priyanka is very much interested in exploring designs with sustainable initiatives. After completing Bachelors of Architecture from KRVIA, Mumbai University, she did her Master of Architecture with major in Design from UNSW, Sydney. In her professional career, Priyanka has worked on variety of projects – urban and rural; commercial, institutional and healthcare both in India and Australia. Her volunteering initiatives include participation in the event organising team of Archikidz! Sydney 2012 held during Sydney Architecture Festival. Currently, Priyanka lives and works in Sydney enjoying her time between professional work and some personal initiatives including writing for Through Vin’s Lens

Often described as a perfectionist, Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) was a prolific and highly experimental artist whose sixty-year career ranged in output from sculpture, furniture, lighting and ceramics to gardens, set design, architecture and interior design. One of the most critically acclaimed sculptors of the twentieth century, no material or artistic discipline seemed beyond the limits of Noguchi’s capabilities – nor his intrigue.

An exhibition of his studio practice at The Noguchi Museum in New York next month will include more than sixty of his specialist tools, along with photos and film footage of the artist at work and an array of finished and unfinished sculptures. Opening on October 3rd, 2012, ‘Hammer, Chisel, Drill: Noguchi’s Studio Practice’ will be the first exhibition to reveal the working methods of this influential sculptor.

Born in the United States to a Japanese father and American mother, Noguchi lived in Japan for 13 years before moving to Indiana. He returned to Japan throughout his life and was deeply influenced by Japanese artistic traditions; an emphasis on simplicity, sensitivity to materials and a respect for craftsmanship were central to his practice.

Having set up studios around the world, with each culture embedding its impression on his development as an artist, the exhibition is arranged in relation to Noguchi’s working methods and phases of experimentation in his most important studios: in Greenwich Village and Long Island City in New York, Pietrasanta and Querceta in Italy and Kita Kamakura and Mure in Japan. But the exhibition begins with his time in Paris during the spring of 1927, when he became an apprentice to Constantin Brancusi. The famed sculptor encouraged the 23-year-old Noguchi to carve directly into stone instead of making preliminary clay or plaster models, and his distinctive form of abstraction permeated Noguchi’s approach to sculpture. He helped to carve Brancusi’s iconic ‘Birds in Space’ with a chemin de fed, a tool displayed in the exhibition along with two of Noguchi’s early abstract sculptures.

The next section features his stone carving from three studios ranging from the 1940s through to the late 1980s. During these four decades, Noguchi moved from the use of power tools on thin sheets of stone in the US, to a return to direct stone carving from the marble quarries of Monte Altissimo in Italy, to the employment of hard, igneous stones such as granite and basalt in Mure, on the Japanese island of Shikoku. Responding to the inherent inertia and heaviness of the latter materials, he allowed his sculptures to evolve slowly, their forms emerging organically from the stone in the vein of Michelangelo.

In the 1950s Noguchi collaborated with a number of young architects and later in life experimented with architectural and landscape projects, such as the Sunken Garden of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University (1960-1964), which is illustrated in the exhibition by his plaster models of the commissioned project, set around his drafting table. The extent to which Noguchi’s own space and surroundings were integral to his working practice is indicated by the fact that his studio in Kita Kamakura, with its primitive earthen walls, was constructed under his close direction.

The exhibition responds with due sensitivity to Noguchi’s work, not only in regard to the sculpture itself but in its attention to the intricate tools that helped materialise his incredible vision. Director of The Noguchi Museum, Jenny Dixon states that ‘by taking visitors behind the scenes into Noguchi’s studios, Hammer, Chisel, Drill provides a rare opportunity to appreciate the extraordinary technical prowess and perfectionism behind his artistic achievement.’

The exhibition lasts until April 28th, 2013.

A focus on engaging people with the built environment, as part of a wider change in approach to architecture, was highlighted at Designed in Hackney Day earlier this month. In the work of American multimedia artist and cultural planner Theaster Gates, the potential of civic interventions is being extended even further. Based in Chicago with a degree in urban planning, ceramics and religious studies, Gates’ work revolves around the significance of places, collective memory and social history, through the ‘poetic’ renovation of neglected buildings and the appropriation of relics from sites of cultural or political pertinence.

In a recent project, Gates extracted the contents of an entire bookshop after it closed down in 2009. The Prairie Avenue Bookshop in Chicago specialised in art and architecture books, the remaining 14,000 of which have been saved as a permanent collection by Gates in the form of a new ‘public library’, placed in a renovated residence on South Dorchester Avenue in Chicago’s run-down South Side as part of the artist’s public archive project: Dorchester Projects.

As one of the USA’s last architecture bookshops, with only two or three remaining in the country, its closure was tragically unsurprising. Yet the books are now freely accessible to anyone in or passing through the neighbourhood, opening up a different potential audience and creating a new life for the collection. As well as the Prairie Avenue Bookshop Archive, Dorchester Projects hosts 60,000 glass lantern slides from the University of Chicago’s art history department and 10,000 LPs from a nearby closed-down record store. Here, books, slides and records – almost vestiges of a different age, obsolete in an era of digitisation – are imbued with a new kind of dignity and value.

Dorchester Projects. Photo by Eric Allix Rogers.

This act of generosity and civic intervention, coined ‘radical hospitality’ underlies much of Gates’ work, which is often based in or sourced from his local Chicago area but also Detroit, Omaha and St Louis. As part of Dorchester Projects, Gates has purchased two other buildings on Dorchester Avenue, currently serving as a food pavilion and artists’ space, in a gesture indicative of his ideological interest in transforming forgotten neighbourhoods. He is also working on the renovation of an abandoned property in the same area in collaboration with Brinshore Development and Landon Bone Baker Architects, which will become a mixed-income apartment block and cultural centre.

From his unusual standpoint as artist and urban planner, Gates is opening up exciting possibilities of crossover in the realms of art, architecture and community. As well as his interventions, Gates works in sculpture and small-scale installation and has exhibited widely in museums across the USA and in Europe. For this year’s collaborative art exhibition dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany, Gates has been working on a project named 12 Ballads for Huguenot House. The artist and his team have transferred materials from within one of the Dorchester Avenue houses that is undergoing restoration to another disused house in Kassel, drawing parallels between the two abandoned residences as they undergo their respective transformations. Gates curated and filmed 12 musical performances in the Dorchester house as a kind of requiem before its renovation began in 2011, and these films are now being shown within Huguenot House as part of its reincarnation.

Using the raw materials from the Dorchester house as components in the reconstruction of the dilapidated Huguenot House, Gates questions what it means to restore a building, leaving traces of the hands that have worked on its recovery. Beneath his community-focused repurposing lies a respect for materials and the weight of history and narrative that they contain; a duality of intention which the artist describes as ‘both practical and poetic’.

Designed in Hackney is a new initiative launched by architecture and design magazine Dezeen to celebrate the creative powerhouse that is London’s East End. In collaboration with Hackney Council and curator Beatrice Galilee, a day-long event took place in a pop-up tent last Wednesday in which architects, technologists and designers shared their ideas, values and opinions alongside presentations of their most ingenious projects.

With a focus on emerging architects, an afternoon discussion entitled ‘The Next Generation: Young Hackney Architects’ was chaired by Dezeen’s Marcus Fairs. Holly Lewis and Oliver Goodhall of the Dalston-based We Made That were the first to talk: a small, six-year-old practice consisting of just four people. They described themselves as having a diverse approach, being not just interested in the architecture itself but in the process, which Oliver pointed out doesn’t necessarily lead to a building. They explore other solutions that address urbanism and the community; a newspaper was the result of one of their projects, and ‘funny installations’ feature amongst their wide-ranging portfolio.

Paleys Upon Pilers by Studio Weave

While admittedly ‘cute’, their work reflects a serious concern with finding ways of engaging people with ideas for positive change in their locality. As part of their ‘Fantasticology’ project, We Made That designed the largest piece of public art for the Olympics: a meadow of wildflowers planted in the footprints of former industrial buildings, coined by Holly as a ‘floral memorial’ to the site’s history. ‘It’s architecture but without the capital ‘A”, said Oliver.

Marcus Fairs remarked that, as a general trend, younger architects are ‘not just slapping buildings up’ like the ‘last generation’. ‘Aloofness’, they discussed, is another trait associated with the previous generation of architects that is being eradicated, a reflection of the changing ways in which architects are approaching their work in general. This non-aloof perspective was echoed in the sentiments of Susanne Tutsch from Erect Architecture, who was next up on stage. Based in the Broadway Market area, the German architect described their work as being ‘architecture with a capital A’ – a phrase already being used in a sheepish, apologetic manner – but also encompassing ‘soft’ works, such as a summer school experiment in which they used timber offcuts from building sites to create new installations in the woods, and an Olympic Park project based on the UK’s ecological heritage. They lay their focus on learning, for both the user and themselves, again seeing architecture as a continual process.

Maria Smith and Je Ahn are the duo behind Studio Weave, the third practice to present their work. Based on Mare Street, their focus lies heavily on making, as the name implies. A recent project commemorates historic Aldgate resident Geoffrey Chaucer with a latticed timber hut, a re-imagining of the author’s dreamlike fictional palaces, which also marks the direct route from the City of London to the Olympic Park. Studio Weave encourage autonomy in the skilled workers that are involved in their projects, including their creations as part of the final product rather than confining them to their usual prescribed roles. Their interest in making use of people’s skills in different areas is shared by Gort Scott, fourth and final of the practices, who see their work as a way of connecting communities. Run by Jay Gort and Fiona Scott, the Dalston-based duo share a fascination with the physical structure of London and its historic roads, making use of the unprecedented abundance of empty shops and spaces in the recessional city.

As these up-and-coming practices suggest, architecture is not just about buildings anymore. It has to centre upon engaging people with the built environment as part of an ongoing process that is more than just ‘building a building’. As Marcus Fairs observed, the aspiration towards ‘iconic’, self-congratulatory ‘statement’ buildings of the previous generation is being rejected in favour of hands-on, community-inclusive, lateral-thinking architecture, in which the architects themselves are decentred.

As the world’s gaze turned to the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday, our attention was drawn to the nineteenth-century shift from the rural to the industrial, and its eventual culmination in today’s urbanised, post-industrial society. While Danny Boyle’s spectacle naturally drew upon the particular impacts and subsequent effects of these changes upon Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it is of course a socio-cultural transition familiar to countries far beyond the UK.

Mark Dorf - from the series, 'Axiom and Simulation'

With an increasingly urban outlook, our collective perception of the natural landscape has undergone dramatic changes over the past two centuries under the direction of artists contemporaneous to each age – from the Romantics’ fervent reaction to the onset of the Industrial Revolution, to the Neo-Romantics’ portrayal of the countryside in the aftermath of the Second World War. We now exist in an era characterised by digital symbols and new media-produced representations of reality, and it is within this environment of coexistence between the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ that today’s artists, designers and architects are operating. It was with this in mind that my attention was drawn to American photographer Mark Dorf, who presents typical scenes that one might encounter whilst walking in the woods, yet with subtle alterations; digital and scientific interpretations of the trees, rocks and lakes are interposed within the familiar, romanticised portrayal of the landscape, blending the realms of the material and the digital.

Mark Dorf - from the series, 'Axiom and Simulation'

His ‘Axiom and Simulation’ series prompts an awareness of the schema that lie behind our everyday perceptions, which force us to understand scenes, spaces or objects in prescribed ways, depending on the context in which they are presented to us. By merging the different schema – the ways in which we perceive an actual forest, a scientific specimen and a digital representation on a computer screen – he destabilises these prescribed perceptions, creating strange, hybrid landscapes that defamiliarise the most familiar scenes. “As a developed global culture, we are constantly transforming physical space and objects into abstract non-physical thought to gain a greater understanding of composition and the inner workings of our surroundings… As a result of these changes, we can lose all reference to the source,” the artist explains.

Mark Dorf - from the series, 'Axiom and Simulation'

The ways in which artists and architects are responding to Nature in the digital age are as wide-ranging as they are fascinating. Recall the works of David Benjamin Sherry with his intense, dreamlike hues immersing wild landscapes, and Matthew Day Jackson’s huge anthropomorphic rocks resurfacing to claim the earth after millennia of human destruction; Alex Hartley’s Nowhereisland, which confronts our obsession with land ownership and control of the natural world; and Peter Zumthor and Piet Oudolf’s encapsulation of the wilderness in the Serpentine Summer Pavilion. Then there are the emotive, indefinable images of Mica de Ridder, depicting clusters of trees fading into abstraction, and Brooklyn-based artist Letha Wilson, who interpolates three-dimensional, man-made objects like cement, styrofoam and cheesecloth into c-print photographs of wooded landscapes, at times interjecting the architecture of the gallery space itself into her photographs.

The fact that over half a million people flocked to David Hockney’s A Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy this year is testament to our longstanding fascination with this subject matter. The landscape will always be a uniquely human concern – after all, a landscape only becomes a landscape when framed by the human eye – and its changing appropriation in art and design is a continuous and vital reflection of the evolution of our relationship with the environment that surrounds us.

For the last part in a series of London Festival of Architecture-focused events that have predominated on the Culture Blog lately, we’re taking a look at an unusual transatlantic collaboration.

The American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) – who may be familiar from the incredible Timber Wave sculpture that was erected outside the V&A last year – has teamed up with London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) for a project in sustainable design.

While ‘sustainable’ is already becoming a vague, hackneyed term that often has little meaning outside the realms of marketing and PR, it is encouraging to see projects that are really taking its importance to the core of what they do. This is one of them. The AHEC challenged 13 students on the Product Design course at the RCA to design innovative and functional seating using an American hardwood of their choice.

Putting its groundbreaking Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) research into action for the first time, the AHEC is enabling students to fully understand, communicate and compare the ‘life cycle impacts’ of their designs, and each piece will be environmentally profiled using the LCA modelling system. As if that didn’t seem thorough enough, the AHEC is in the process of producing the first ever Environmental Product Declaration for American hardwood lumber and veneer, which will be used by the students to produce a ‘cradle-to-grave’ analysis of the environmental effect of their designs. No room for vagueness here.

The students developed their seating ideas into working prototypes at Terence Conran’s Benchmark workshops last week, and the results will be exhibited at the V&A in September in an exhibition called Out of the Woods: Adventures of 13 Hardwood Chairs.

Under the leadership of tutors Sebastian Wrong and Harry Richardson, the use of wood and its life cycle impacts have become a part of the Product Design course curriculum at the RCA. Richardson says, ‘it is not only a case of designing a chair that will survive physically far into the future, it is also to produce a chair whose design will remain relevant far into the future.’

After three years of gradually creeping above London’s existing skyline, The Shard’s controversial pinnacle was finally reached last week. Renzo Piano’s bold tower, snugly adjacent to London Bridge station, has caused a polarity of opinions since its construction began in March 2009.

At over 308 metres high, The Shard now stands as the tallest completed building in Europe – a statistic still childishly perceived as an accolade it seems. Perceived by some as a positive vision of the modern, globalised city, to many it is a tasteless monument to bankers and oligarchs, dominating the skyline and dwarfing other buildings such as St Paul’s. It has been described as ‘magnificent’ and ‘boring’, ‘increasing architectural variety’ and ‘a dreadful symbol of Dead Britain’.

But now the apex has been reached, the anti-climactic laser show has been and gone and the onset of the Olympic Games lurks ominously around the corner. The Shard’s moment in the limelight has already passed and attention is being turned to other luminary architectural displays. While the inaugural light show at The Shard seemed little more than a publicity stunt to try to convert those fence-sitters into fans, architect and designer Jason Bruges will be putting on a genuinely interesting light art spectacle this week at London’s South Bank.

Bruges, who has previously worked on countless large and small-scale design projects including Becks’ Green Box Project and the re-branding of More4 (worth a watch), has been commissioned by high-end lighting firm Havells Sylvania to create an interactive movement and light sculpture under the Hungerford Bridge.

The ‘21st Century Light Space Modulator’, as it has been optimistically named, will blend Eastern and Western influences and pays homage to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s ‘Light Space Modulator’ of 1930, a pioneering piece of kinetic light art. A spokesperson for the collaborative project states: “It’s an interactive installation and Jason and team will be evolving it over the next few months, but the basic concept is to take a really under-loved area of the Southbank and turn it into something which people enjoy, experiencing using light and movement.”

The project will initially go live under the bridge on Thursday, but will continue to develop until its final unveiling in the autumn of 2012. So there will be light at the end of the Olympic tunnel, after all.