Location
London, UK
Date
2022
Client
London Design Festival
Architect
Stanton Williams
Structural Engineers: Webb Yates
With ‘Henge', we celebrated the 20th Anniversary of London Design Festival. For two decades, it has turned London into a global stage for the best design and talent coming out of Britain. The Festival, without a doubt, has helped to grow London into the creative capital of the world. With each landmark project and each art piece, there are many stories to tell. There are experiences shaped through the materiality of light and narratives that tie the sculpture to the site in beautiful and meaningful ways. Lighting activates night time space, especially those under-utilised just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.
Through these projects, we witness how lighting engages the public and gathers people together, particularly in London, which is becoming so culturally rich at night. Marking our 12th project for London Design Festival, ‘Henge' at Wren Landing – Canary Wharf exemplifies the important role public art plays in the cultural well-being and enjoyment of cities.
For one of the Festival's Landmark Projects, a collaborative endeavour by Stanton Williams and Experimentapt, sees the conception of ‘Henge', a captivating and participatory sculptural form. Designed to inspire creative engagement, ‘Henge' beckons residents, workers, and visitors to immerse themselves in its artistic allure, igniting impromptu performances, musical interludes, and poetry readings both within and around its structure.
Poised atop Wren Landing, overlooking the iconic North Dock footbridge, ‘Henge' stands as a beckoning gateway, welcoming a steady stream of people from West India Quay Station to Cabot Square.
To elevate the enchantment after dusk, SEAM, with support from Light Projects, extends the experience into the night time hours through meticulously positioned and programmed lighting. ‘Henge' maintains its monumentality and elegance, transforming into a captivating night dial that unveils time through graceful movements of light.
As each quarter hour approaches, a carefully choreographed light sequence breathes life into the installation, not only infusing it with animation but also paying homage to ‘Henge' as an artistic instrument of time.
Photography
London – Mark Cocks edge
Diagrams & Illustrations by SEAM
Location
London, UK
Milan, Italy
Madrid, Spain
Date
2018–ongoing
Client
American Hardwood Export Council
London Design Festival
Milan Design Week
Madrid Design Festival
Architect
Waugh Thistleton Architects
Team
Arup
Stage One
The demountable pavilion MultiPly first debuted for London Design Festival 2018, and has so far travelled to Milan Design Week 2019 and Madrid Design Festival 2020. Designed by Waugh Thistleton Architects for the American Hardwood Export Council, the public artwork applies prefabrication and modular construction to showcase engineered-timber’s material integrity and beauty. Each urban situation informs a bespoke modular configuration and, in response, a unique lighting programme, with SEAM’s illumination bringing each MultiPly installation to life after dark.
SEAM expanded the lighting brief to include the project’s modularity, with an affordable, transportable and dynamically programmable system. A singular lighting detail is integrated into each module during pre-fabrication, with all modules then connected on site and controlled wirelessly via Bluetooth. Once assembled, each system is programmed on location in real-time across a single evening, using mobile devices to operate MultiPly, to align the pavilion’s brightness and animations with the local sunset hours and spatial context from key local vantage points.
The resulting, dynamic compositions of glowing doorways, layering light and dark surfaces, make MultiPly’s architecture legible and enjoyable at night. At the human scale, the lighting welcomes visitors and highlights pathways through the maze-like interior, while at the urban scale it creates an enigmatic sculpture, which then evolves in a shifting parallax of solids and voids as one encircles, enters and ascends through the structure. The precise route through MultiPly remains each visitor’s own exploration.
While London revolved around an interior exploration, Milan was viewed predominantly as a stacked facade in elevation, and Madrid introduced an inhabitable sculpture into the city’s Esplanade de Puente del Rey civic realm – representing an unprecedented public artwork for Spain. In every iteration, MultiPly shows how lighting can enhance architecture’s modularity, sustainability and identity, while demonstrating all of these qualities as urban experiences for people to enjoy.
Awards
2019 Wood Awards – Small Project
2019 Structural Timber Awards – Pioneer Award
Photography
London – Ed Reeve
Milan – Giovanni Nardi
Madrid – Eugenio de Vila Martinez
Location
London, UK
Status
Competition – 2016
Shortlisted with Honourable Mention
Client
Illuminated River Foundation
Competition organiser
Malcolm Reading Consultants
Architect
AL_A
Landscape
GROSS MAX
Artist
Asik Kapadia
Playwright
Simon Stephens
In a broad sense the lighting tells the story about the Thames as a time piece, reconnecting people to the Thames in a meaningful way. It aims to become a visual mnemonic for people’s intuitive understanding of the river's tidal behaviour and the mysterious effects of moonrise and moonset. The use of a simple dynamic lighting system allows for scenes that shift light to elegantly illuminate bridges together with the banks as a continuous and luminous thread. In this performance, each individually controlled luminaire has a purpose, with a role in the choreography and composition of light with great sensitivity to flight paths of migrating birds, bats, even airplanes and the river habitat.
The duration between sunset and twilight is when attention to the sky shifts below the horizon to the river. Illumination slowly wanders up the river, as if chasing the sun, yet stays for the night when dusk settles in. At high tide, the elevations of the river walls and bridge fronts are illuminated with warm white light thereby creating a continuous band along the river. During the shift to low tide, attention is brought to the arched spaces between the water and bridge undercarriages, as a cool white illumination moves towards the middle of the river, as if filling the void of the tide rolling out to sea.
As the tidal flow recedes, a series of luminaires along the river walls light the foreshores creating a new night-time public space, drawing more people to the water’s edge and reclaiming its beaches. Instrumental to both of these modes is the reflective surface of the water, which doubles the lighting effect and completes each scenario.
These are the bold stories – poetic, ephemeral, technological and meaningful – we wish to unfold through intricate and well-considered lighting as a symbol of London's unifying diversity and a beacon for progressive sustainability.
Awards
2016 Malcolm Reading Competition – Shortlisted, Honourable Mention
Location
London, UK
Date
2011
Client
American Hardwood Export Council
London Design Festival
Architect
AL_A
Team
Arup
Lighting sponsor
iGuzzini
AL_A's design for Timber Wave set out to explore the limits of material strength of the wood as well as the fabrication method to create a 12m high, red-oak sculptural archway at the main entrance of the V&A museum for the London Design Festival 2011. The challenge for us as lighting designer was to create an iconographic identity for the entrance at night with little or no budget. Minimalist in means, yet grand in its result, our solution allowed the light to pass through the arch to create an intricate set of patterns on the facade, beautifully unifying the composition for a powerful identity at night and a new experience for the visitor.
Awards
2012 Wood Awards – Judges’ Special Award
2012 D&AD Awards – Spatial Design/Installation
Photography
London Design Festival
Dennis Gilbert
Tom Lorton
Location
Wakefield, UK
Date
2019
Exhibition architect
Farshid Moussavi Architecture
At the Hepworth Wakefield gallery in Leeds, the temporary exhibition The Journey of Things brings together more than 50 of Magdalene Odundo’s vessels. As exhibition designer, Farshid Moussavi Architecture has successfully and elegantly knitted together a minimalist David Chipperfield gallery with the delicateness of Odundo’s ceramic art. This exhibition is a journey through these influential art pieces told in a series of demarcated pathways, carved within continuous monolithic display plinths shrouded in a velvety tadelakt surface. Coupled with a lighting narrative by SEAM, Odundo’s work is set centre stage within a context of the artist’s influences and inspirations from the works of others including Henri Moore, Auguste Rodin, Barbara Hepworth, Edgar Degas and others.
“Heartbreakingly beautiful" – Burlington Contemporary
Photography
Lewis Ronald
Location
London, UK
Date
2016
Clients
London Design Festival
MINI
Architect
Asif Khan Architects
Team
Conservatory Archives
Aldworth James & Bond
Lighting sponsor
iGuzzini
Asif Khan's Forests installation for London Design Festival 2016 explores the idea of 'third places' in the city. Three pavilions – Connect, Create and Relax – are located within walking distance of one another. Their clear material language creates a deliberate contrast to Shoreditch's urban setting. They are all rectangular forms, with walls made from several layers of transparent, corrugated polycarbonate.
The challenge for the lighting was to create an object which could, from the outside, compete with the bustling night life and urban environment that is Shoreditch. Whilst internally staying true to the concept of living spaces, the pavilions are treated as extensions of our personal space, being completely removed from the chaos of London life.
Photography
London Design Festival
Location
London, UK
Date
2016
Clients
American Hardwood Export Council
London Design Festival
Architect
Alison Brooks Architects
Team
Arup
ZÜBLIN Timber
Lighting sponsors
Atrium
MCI Grupo
Alison Brooks Architects' design for the 2016 London Design Festival’s official Landmark Project presents a cross-laminated tulipwood structure, set in the Parade Ground of Chelsea College of Arts in London for four weeks. Touching the ground at a single point, the 34m-long, curved, hollow tube showcases the structural potential of American tulipwood.
Awards
2017 Wood Awards – Structural Award
2017 Wood Awards – Small Architecture – Shortlisted
2017 Architizer A+ Awards – Pavilions
Photography
Courtesy of Alison Brooks Architects
Location
London, UK
Date
2019
Curator
Matter of Stuff
Exhibition designer
PiM.studio
Hosted at London’s artist-led Sketch restaurant in Mayfair, this temporary exhibition repurposes thousands of wooden dowels from curator Matter of Stuff’s previous Pop-Up Concept Gallery show into a screened linear gallery.
Four emerging designers showcase innovative, up-cycled artworks made with the dowels. Functional objects and sculptures capitalise on the dowels’ material strength while championing resource efficiency and waste minimisation. SEAM’s proposal re-purposes standard gallery track and spotlights into a lighting system that highlights the form and texture of the screening walls. The simple retrofit of the system allows for the lighting to be programmed into scenes that dim gradually into an undulating late-night lighting sequence that creates a gentle drifting atmosphere to the gallery.
Photography
Matter of Stuff/Mark Cocksedge
Location
London, UK
Date
2015
Client
London Design Festival
Architect
Grafton Architects
Team
Graphic Relief
Irish Design 2015
Millimetre
Lighting sponsor
TM Lighting
Light emphasises the exquisite texture of Grafton Architects’ concrete monoliths but builds drama in the in-between spaces, enhancing the experience of the exhibit and the presence of the artwork. Typically these moments are lost in galleries where objects alone are the subject of interest.
Unveiled in the V&A’s Tapestries Room as part of London Design Festival 2015, each three-meter tall concrete fin relates to a letter in the Ogham alphabet, and each letter symbolises a native Irish tree, calling to mind ancient Irish and British sites with standing stones, like Lettergorman in County Cork and Stonehenge in England.
The scheme aimed to achieve maximum effect while insuring the conservation of the highly sensitive surrounding tapestries.
Photography
Ed Reeve
Location
London, UK
Date
2013
Client
American Hardwood Export Council
London Design Festival
Architect
dRMM
Team
NUSSLI
Arup
Lighting sponsor
Lumenpulse
Like a folly in the landscape, the Endless Stair by dRMM has evolved from "an Escher-like game of perception and circulation", where composition and social possibilities meet. The lighting design and strategy promotes these various interactions by enhancing the juxtapositional relationships of surface/solid, solid/void, and disorientation/configuration, through the use of carefully placed and aimed luminaires provided by Lumenpulse. The lighting controls and sequencing enhance particular features to express these juxtapositions, creating an interactive play between the physical structure and the ephemeral nature of light.
Awards
2014 Wood Awards – Judges’ Special Award
Photography
James Newton
Location
London, UK
Date
2015
Client
London Design Festival
Artist
Alex Chinneck
Lighting sponsor
OSRAM
A Bullet for a Shooting Star was unveiled as the headline installation for London Design Festival 2015. Set in the Greenwich peninsula among other architectural landmarks, the upturned electrical pylon creates a crisp silhouette against the sky. Alex Chinneck's proposal in the form of an inverted electric pylon drew us to themes like celestial bodies, the works of Nicola Tesla, lighting and electricity, all of which inspired our design concepts for illumination of the sculpture.
Our challenge for the lighting design was to enhance the sculpture's legibility and presence at night. A ten-minute progressive sequence reveals the sober lines of the sculpture's silhouette by gradually filling the pylon with white light before it plumes with deep oranges and fades into the night sky. The colour is reminiscent of molten steel which simultaneously recalls how the sculpture was forged as well as a nod to the site's industrial history.
Photography
David Cabrera
OSRAM
Location
London, UK
Date
2018
Client
London Design Biennale
Curator
Mohamed Elshahed
Exhibition design
Lund Gaballa Architects
Team
Westby & Jones
Ahmed Tahoun
Valerie Arif
Every two years, the London Design Biennale brings an international programme to the city’s grand, Grade I-listed Somerset House arts institution, to coincide with the annual, city-wide London Design Festival. For the 2018 Biennale, the temporary exhibition Egypt: Modernist Indignation now unearths the north-African country’s lesser-famous, contemporary architecture.
A freestanding, minimalist metal structure organises the two-room show, complete with concrete plinths and assorted wall displays. Linear LEDs mount to the bespoke frame’s bars, forming sheets of light that emphasise the suspended graphics and information while strengthening the visitor’s navigation through the collection. The venue’s existing spotlights are also enlisted, to highlight the podia and perimeter exhibits.
All lamps are tuned to harmonise with the ambient daylight that gently permeates the building’s historic, neoclassical interior.
Awards
2018 London Design Biennale – Medal for Most Outstanding Overall Contribution
Production
Zein Khalifa / TINTERA
Cairobserver
Support
Orascom Developments
Pharos Holding for Financial Investments
Barjeel Art Foundation
British Council
Mrs. Sherine Sawiris
Mrs. Cherine Helmy
Photography
Courtesy of Lund Gaballa Architects
Location
London, UK
Date
2018
Client
London Design Festival
Artist
Henrik Vibskov
Collaborators
Danish Arts Foundation
Danish Ministry of Culture
Embassy of Denmark, London
Lighting sponsor
TM Lighting
Onion Farm is an engaging and playful installation by Danish fashion designer Henrik Vibskov as part of the 2018 London Design Festival, in the V&A museum’s Tapestry Room.
From the inspiration of "growing something in the dark, as if underground", SEAM worked together with TM Lighting to provide dramatic lighting; to invite visitors to engage with the installation of playful colours and textures of red textile onions, composed with spiny and prickly brushes. Spotlights from TM Lighting are located at the existing tracks of the Tapestry Room ceiling and adjusted to the Onion Farm to create a play of shadow and light on the floor. These compositions of projected shadows are overlaid along the outer part of the installation to create additional patterns on the floor, increasing the presence of the sculpture within the Tapestry Room.
The gallery requires low-level light to protect the priceless 15th-century tapestries. Additional lights for the sculpture were carefully aimed towards the central spine of the room and away from the tapestries to maintain sufficient levels of light. Contrast ratios of 1:3 were targeted, to allow for Onion Farm to be featured, while maintaining legibility of the tapestries in a differently lit environment for the duration of the festival.
Photography
Andy Stagg
Location
London, UK
Date
2015
Client
Disegno Magazine
Curator
Riya Patel, Aram Gallery
Exhibition designer
Universal Design Studio
As our planet teeters toward a catastrophic two-degree temperature rise, Disegno Magazine enlists ten disciplines to together empower the public climate debate.
Entitled 2°C: Communicating Climate Change, ten designers exhibit models, photography, graphics and objects across ten identical booths, collectively installed into the Aram Gallery in the Covent Garden area of central London.
SEAM supported the curator and exhibition designer to specify and install the display booths’ luminaires.
This temporary exhibition gathered original works by Dominic Wilcox, Ilona Gaynor, Maria Blaisse, Marjan van Aubel, Ross Lovegrove, Neri&Hu, Parsons & Charlesworth, PearsonLloyd, Sam Baron, and Universal Design Studio.
Photography
Courtesy of Universal Design Studio
Location
London, UK
Date
2019
Client
Barbican Centre
Architect
Tonkin Liu
At the heart of London’s brutalist Barbican cultural complex, the Curve gallery space hosts a future-focused exhibition by architects Tonkin Liu, as part of the Barbican’s centre-wide, blockbuster AI: More Than Human exhibition. Suspended theatrical scrims and dispersed monoliths together structure the space, while strategic lighting targets the content to create an immersive, kinetic atmosphere.
Narrow-beam gallery spotlights are complemented by a dynamic exhibition-wide animated sequence of programmable lighting. This overarching wave of diffuse light flows dramatically across the length of the gallery to connect the successive narrative sections of the exhibition. Theatrical scrims and areas of floor are statically illuminated, articulating Tonkin Liu’s network of pathways through the collection.
To achieve the optimum impact within the limited lighting allowance for this travelling show, SEAM designed and deployed a set of 40 custom spotlights from standard componentry. These wirelessly programmed Bluetooth fittings decrypted a 60% cost saving, allowing additional fittings to be supplied as part of the exhibition.
Photography
Alex Peacock
Location
London, UK
Date
2014
Clients
London Design Festival
BMW
Design
Barber & Osgerby
Team
Arup
Millimetre Design
ETC
As part of the 2014 London Design Festival, Barber & Osgerby's Double Space installation for BMW features two huge mirror structures suspended in the grand, barrel-vaulted Raphael Gallery of London’s historic V&A museum. The Raphael cartoons themselves are reflected and distorted in these panels as they slowly rotate above visitors.
As the installation takes on the richness of the surrounding paintings and architecture, SEAM's strategy focuses the lighting on the surrounding cartoons, adding depth and dimension to the experience. The curators’ response was exuberant in excitement at the drama created by revealing, for the first time, the depth of colour in the artworks.
This architectural lighting was made possible through the LED framing projectors provided by ETC, whose colour rendering provided optimal illumination without degradation to the priceless works of art.
Photography
London Design Festival
Location
London, UK
Date
2017
Client
London Design Festival
Artist
Ross Lovegrove
Fabricator
Alcantara
Lighting sponsor
TM Lighting
Transmission is a long, fluid sculpture of folded material by artist Ross Lovegrove for the 2017 London Design Festival. The installation is a response to the historic narratives of the surrounding tapestries and the atmosphere that the V&A’s Tapestry Room creates. These tapestries, made circa 1425-1450, are a rare survival of high-brow art of that time, and are among the museum's greatest treasures. Lovegrove artistically interprets these prized works into the soft undulating folds of the installation.
SEAM’s purpose is to enhance the stories of the Tapestry Room and Transmission through the use of light, and to let light be another narrative medium. The challenge is how to feature a centrepiece while connecting it with the tapestries to create an art environment. Sensitive art-conservation LED spotlights with high colour rendering were chosen, which can be fitted with various accessories and filters to create a ‘light curtain’ across the looped edges of the sculpture, to create a continuous ribbon occupying the length of the Tapestry Room.
Photography
Alcantara
Location
Accra, Ghana
Status
Ongoing – commenced 2017
Team
Metonym Design
Ramboll
Theatre Projects
This ambitious vision – with architectural lighting design by SEAM – brings a state-of-the-art performance pavilion to Ghana, to help create a new venue to herald the design and performance excellence of Africa.
Images
Metonym Design
Location
Damascus, Syria
Status
Design
Client
Majid Al Futtaim Group
Architect
ACME
Ornate facades, adorned with arabesque stonework patterns, are unified under a bespoke roof canopy structure. SEAM was appointed to the ACME-led team to design the lighting for this unique visitor's gallery and showroom, located at the Khams Shamat Master Development, just outside Damascus.
The project comprises four pavilions that are arranged around feature courtyards to celebrate the five ‘beauty mark’ ancient cities of Greater Syria: Aleppo, Antioch, Damascus, Jerusalem and Tiberias. The pavilions provide exhibition galleries, administrative offices, an auditorium, executive offices, and lounge spaces. SEAM’s lighting scope covers all interior and exterior public areas, including the feature facades.
Images
SEAM Design
ACME
Location
New York, US
Client
Taiwanese Consulate
Architects
Jeffrey McKean Architecture
Swanke Hayden Connell Architects
Fulfilling the aspiration to create a prestigious new address in Manhattan, the Taiwanese Consulate is a renovated corporate office building, and home to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office. SEAM provided lighting design services for the public areas and for the typical office floor lighting, from concept through to construction.
A defining architectural statement is created in the grand double-height atrium, where a custom feature wall provides a flexible exhibit display for curating cultural artefacts. The atrium’s lighting system is multi-modal, allowing the atrium to double as a special-event performance space that opens into art galleries at the ground and mezzanine levels. Theatrical performance lighting and architectural lighting are integrated into the lower-ground-floor auditorium, including illuminated ‘skylights’ that shine through the atrium floor above.
A world-class working environment and private offices are created across the upper levels.
Photography
Jeffrey McKean Architecture
