Nicholas Alexander worked with Thrsxty to create to design a functional scheme to launch of Hibiki Japanese Harmony.
The aim of the progect was to create an authentic Japanese cultural context to establish deeper understanding of the Hibiki Brand and the House of Suntory Whisky.
The bar proved very popular during the weekend, so unfortunately there was nothing left for us to drink when we arrived to take it down!
We worked over a number of months with Westfield to produce the Music Cube. A soundproof glass cube designed as a stage where the audience experiences live music through wireless headphones. From prototyping through to completion the cube was fabricated and tested in our workshop and then appeared at both Westfield locations in London in October. Enormous glass panels were fixed into aluminium frames with the use of a glass lifting robot! The result was an immersive experience for both artist and audience. A reusable structure, the cube is now in storage until next time!
Working with Root for Cartoon Network we produced a trade stand in Kensington Olympia for the Brand Licensing show. Components for the huge amount of cubes were cut on our CNC machine and then laminated, with graphics depicting cartoon characters applied later on site. These blocks allowed for speedy building of the walls and rooms on site and the lamination process ensured a high quality finish and meant that no finishing had to be done on site during the 2 day installation. We also used integrated cube shaped LED screens to animate some of the cubes, bringing the stand to life.
We worked with Studio Weave to build the ‘Smith’ Pavilion in St. John’s Square for Clerkenwell Design Week 2014. Using fibre cement panels supplied by Equitone our team erected the structure over 5 days ready for the 3 day festival. Intricate illustrations celebrating crafts and ‘smiths’ were created by using the coloured boards as inlay.
Working with Innovate 7 and Campaign Design for Adidas, we created a pop-up ‘shoebox’ store for the re-release of the Stan Smith trainer at the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch. Made as a semi permanent structure and clad in white acoustic foam this giant interactive shoe box contained 3D printers and interactive floor projections, alongside 120 Limited Edition shoes for sale. No giant shoes though unfortunately…
We recently completed this great laced rope interior at Wahaca restaurant in Waterloo. Based on initial concept input from Softroom Architects, we took over the detailed design after site visits and problem solving exercises to get around some tricky permanent structure. The overall effect is now one of a playful and vibrant space which is incredibly inviting. So good that we’re currently adding in more paneling, in extra colours..!
We worked with the lovely team at Marmalade a few weeks ago to create this vibrant and really fun show for Kipling bags. This was for an internal event, showcasing the new theme for this season – celebrate!
The show was designed around a fun, carnival theme and we built multi-coloured screens, display carts and a bar for the one-off event in the old stock exchange building in Amsterdam.
We built this project in just 1 week – the things we do for our clients eh?!
The Mobile Orchard is a new public installation designed by atmos – an inhabitable hymn to the urban fruit tree, commissioned as the centrepiece for the City of London Festival. Its exuberant design celebrates the wonder of trees, and offers a magical mutation – a welcoming structure tailored to humans. We were brought in to rationalise the fabrication process and get it built!
The City of London Festival commissioned the Mobile Orchard for 2013 as part of an ongoing objective to raise awareness of environmental issues through artistic responses to the natural world. Alongside the manufactured tree at the Mobile Orchard’s centre, sixty four real trees, donated by the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers, will travel with it around the City. After the Festival twelve of these will be planted at Middlesex Street Estate to form the City of London’s first community orchard; the remainder will be distributed to schools around the capital. The sculpture itself will be gifted to the Festival’s partner charity Trees for Cities as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations and will continue to be used around the country.
Nicholas Alexander was brought on to handle the fabrication of the ambitious Mobile Orchard. Given our extensive experience of unusual and exciting one-off constructions, and in-house digital fabrication capabilities, we were an obvious choice! Rationalising the build process of such a complex object was the main role for the company – taking what is theoretical in a set of drawings and turning this into an organised and buildable set of components. Given the tight budget and vast amount of labour necessary to complete the fabrication, Nicholas Alexander organised and welcomed into their workshop a diverse group of volunteers of varying skill levels. Everyone had in abundance an enthusiasm and a passion to work together, learning new skills from the team at Nicholas Alexander and seeing the tree develop and grow over the course of a few weeks.
From the architects: It centers on a large, sculptural timber oasis that doubles as immersive summer street furniture – morphing into seating, shelter, stairway and sky-throne. Its undulating roots offer a landscape for lounging, including sinuous benches and molten armchairs that cradle the gaze upwards through the hollow trunk.Massive branches worm outwards to offer further seats, and splay to form fluid steps that lead to a branch-clad throne at the tip of the trunk.A lightweight latticework of aluminium unfurls from the laminated plywood grains to support a canopy of lasercut leaves – each blade a local London borough, with the Host borough further subdivided into wards – the blossom and seeds of the project.Electric LED lighting threads through its veins, uniting base and crown, their sinuous lines like section-cuts that graphically describe the segments of its core geometry, terminating in glowing bulbs of moon-light spots.
The installation is edible – cradling a constellation of real apples, refreshed daily, that are ripe for the plucking by any member of the public. It is accompanied by a choir of young fruit trees that, like the modular nature of the tree itself, will grow over time, awaiting a future in schools and orchards across London.It will host a series of events and performances, including specially-commissioned theatre and music, a Fruit-Feast dinner and an Urban Picnic of gleaned fruit and veg from the team at Feeding the 5,000. The project seeks to create a new kind of public landscape that merges the best of man-made design and organic nature. It offers a labyrinth of complex, intriguing, generous spaces that seek to nourish all the senses – celebrating both natural trees, and the communion of cities.
We worked with Australian company Elite Sports to create a unique floating cricket pitch on the Thames last week.
Five of the Australian cricket team were in town to train for the upcoming Ashes and use the promotional event to drum up further support ahead of the series.
Our role was to take the concept and initial design layout from drawing to reality. Thankfully we know a bit about floating stunts on the Thames so this wasn’t too tricky, even in the short timescale we had to work with! We delivered all the pitch elements in a one-day site build, right down to the flags. Thankfully the rain held off and everyone was happy!
Our army of amazing volunteers are doing a sterling job helping us create the ambitious Mobile Orchard for the City of London Festival and Atmos studio. The laminated branch sections are being bolted up now – next step, trunk!