Walkway

Imperial College, London

Project duration: 6 months

Download a press article in Blueprint and Varoom

Project Background

Imperial College, London provides world class scholarship, education and research in science, engineering, management and medicine. We were invited to propose a design for the walkway and the large courtyard at Imperial College headquarters which would act as focal point within the space.

The walkway spans 196 metres and houses shops and eating venues, and is also used as an area for students to communicate with each other via notice boards and pillars which are continually used as a surface for posters and messages. One of the main themes in the brief was that the walkway had to feel owned by the students.

The Imperial College walkway project was defined by finding a technical solution that was of low maintenance, easy to clean, vandal proof, hard wearing but still kept to the original artistic vision. The art produced was realized by researching and developing an approach to the use of outdoor long-term digital printing techniques, with materials that were sustainable, flexible and bespoke.

Walkway Proposal

The graphic treatment for the walkway uses scientific notebooks, notes, and diagrams as a general theme that run through the space.

The initial idea for this project developed from the first client meeting when we visited the college shop and found a wide range of scientific notebooks and pads. Throughout history scientists have recorded their thoughts and ideas in notebook form, from Da Vinci to Einstein.

We presented the idea that a notebook in a way is similar to the way that students in the college put up posters. By adopting the feeling of notebooks - posters and events can easily be applied on top of the artwork - as it will start to build up the layers of life in the college.

Design Development

Due to the number of access points along the walkway, notebooks where installed in popular access and meeting areas, whilst artworks where positioned in walkways.

Solution

The final installation used extracts of note books with various (unreal) symbols representing scientific type information on them as areas not to be touched and to leave blank notice pages on big sheets of glass like material as places where notices could be placed.

Installation

This particular project involved integrating entirely new graphic design concepts into a structural and material format that maximised the effectiveness of the graphics. This was achieved by applying high definition optically clear digitally printed polyester membranes onto 10mm toughened glass panels. The glass panels are stood off the wall surface using bespoke stainless steel fitments and recessed side wall strips in order to minimise wear, tear and vandalism and to ensure a very long life product.

This combination of highly original graphic concept using carefully engineered materials have produced a high quality end product, that offer unique and inspired visual images to an area of the South Kensington Campus, (the Main Walkway) that had previously been dull and un-inspiring.

Once the project was installed it was fascinating to see how the work was interacted with by students. In a matter of hours posters and events around the college appeared on the notice boards when at the end of a term they are cleaned ready for use in the next term.