Paddington-born designer Adam Nathaniel Furman has designed a new installation for the 2019 London Design Festival. Opening next month, the installation is made to enliven Paddington Central with a curated break-out area in the fabric of the city. Called the Paddington Pyramid, the project aims to create an expression of communal happiness and pleasure where the everyday becomes extraordinary.
As Adam Nathaniel Furman states, "We navigate the year by looking forward to these moments of collective exuberance, and similarly we navigate the spaces of our cities by relating to monuments, points of shared reference that help us orientate ourselves in the beautifully layered, historical smorgasbord that is London. In Paddington Pyramid, these two tendencies are brought together, a temporary monument, a joyful reference point is created in a jubilant spirit, made of light materials, bright colors, a vertical stepped tower, it is an ephemeral marker and local point of orientation that is a cheerful reference point for London Design Festival, which is itself now a much loved feature in the annual life of Paddington."
The inspiration for the Pyramid comes from the temporary architectures of fairs and festivals, of pride and parades, as well as of traditional monuments in cities, points of shared orientation. Designed to be a meeting point and hang out area for the Paddington Basin area, the project would become a temporary icon at the end of Kingdom Street. The Pyramid will be made of semi-open fabric that is printed in bold colors, and is hung from cables, all the way up to 13 meters in a series of setbacks, that recall the strong form of ancient monuments. The simple and bold patterns were chosen to make the object clear and legible from a distance, and vivid from up close.
Furman touched on the city and the London Design Festival, stating that, " I love London, it is the city that has made me, and the place where I feel at home, it truly is a wondrous creation of human ingenuity and genius, and it is so wonderful that there is an annual festival that actively celebrates, and aims to reveal some of the incredible amount of design and creativity that is consonantly going on behind the facades of this great town."
The 2019 London Design Festival will run from September 14th to the 22nd, and the festival will include large-scale installations by Paul Cocksedge, Martino Gamper, PATTERNITY, Dan Tobin Smith and Camille Walala. Returning for its 17th year, the festival will celebrate design across London. Initially established in 2003 by Sir John Sorrell and Ben Evans, the London Design Festival is an annual citywide celebration that brings together a global community of designers, artists, architects and the creative industries with a vision to celebrate and promote London as a major design capital.
