CABE CENTREPIECE

Centrepiece of the Climate Change Festival in Birmingham in collaboration with Block Architecture.

The festival, co-organised by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), aimed to promote awareness of climate change and low-carbon initiatives.

CABE gave us an interesting and wide-ranging brief to create a large-scale piece of public art that would be beguiling and curious, engaging, social and fun.

Our competition-winning design utilised a 95-ft pylon, ‘upcycled’ with shiny nickel plating and installed in the city centre on a cornfield base so it appeared that it had been cut out of its habitual environment. The incongruity of a pylon in an urban setting, and its unusual appearance, were intended to encourage public curiosity and engagement.