GREEN & BLUE INFRASTRUCTURE
“ HIMACS was the obvious choice of materials from which to fabricate the mural,” confirms Stuart,“ It has incredible design flexibility combined with the requisite toughness, it’ s compatible with all the complex lighting and electronics, plus it’ s non-porous, resistant and easy to clean, but can also be repaired, if necessary. The choice of Opal from the Lucent collection was the ideal way to get the eye-catching yet diffuse translucency we were after.”
Paying artistic homage to a vibrant town, with help from its children Aptly named“ Royals, Residents & a Rock Festival”, the project acknowledges the area’ s cultural heritage including famous faces associated with the town, such as Kate Winslet, Ricky Gervais, Kate Middleton( now HRH The Princess of Wales) and Marianne Faithfull, alongside local figures such as businesswoman Tutu Melaku, scientist Dr Ethelwynn Trewavas and table tennis champion Matthew
Syed. Reading landmarks such as the Hexagon Theatre, the Oracle and ONE Station Hill – and of course the town’ s globally renowned rock festival – are also depicted.
It’ s clear by the delighted and fascinated reactions of passersby, day or night, that the installation is a popular and captivating success, which works beautifully as an urban regeneration project to engage townspeople and visitors alike – a worthy landmark for this important transport and economic hub and gateway to the west of England.
“ This hugely impressive public space is now effectively the town’ s new front door. The creation of an attractive green space and accompanying public square, complete with seating, sculptures and artwork, will quickly become a destination in its own right,” says Councillor Liz Terry, leader of Reading Borough Council of the Station Hill project.
Lee Fearnhead, director of construction for UK & Europe at Lincoln Property Company, and on behalf of the Lincoln MGT JV, adds:“ This newly landscaped area was previously a derelict, inaccessible site for the best part of 20 years. We have transformed it into a series of attractive open spaces which everyone in Reading can enjoy.”
How the mural was made:“ The installation is a kind of giant, complicated light box,” explains Stuart Melrose.“ The outer shell and the black lines that stencil the front of the piece and represent Kev’ s original artwork are made of powder coated aluminium. The real magic in the piece from a design perspective – which also makes it the first of its kind at this scale globally – is the way the rich and even LED colours fill the space between these lines, and glow from pastel tones to deeper shades as it gets darker outside.”
To achieve this effect an extensive, programmable system for over 100,000 individually addressable LEDs was devised, together with something Stuart describes as a“ cookie-cutter” style channel to guide the light, and crucially, choosing“ the best diffuser we could find.” This came in the form of HIMACS, a material capable of diffusing the illumination to optimal effect, spreading the light evenly and allowing for clarity of colour.
“ What’ s more,” as Stuart explains,“ being the front-facing surface to an outdoor, 50m-long mural, it needed to be structurally strong enough and durable enough to withstand life in a public space and an extremely high traffic area. But we also needed
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