Lost Cuckoo: the video
We have put together this short video about our Lost Cuckoo project with artist Marcus Rowlands from the DVD produced by the Lakeside Art Centre, who hosted the event last year.
The project was great fun and we are looking forward to develop this concept in other art festivals this year!
Lost Cuckoo report
The Lost Cuckoo project culminated last weekend with an event at the Wheee! International Childrens' Theatre and Dance Festival at Nottingham's Lakeside Arts Centre. Nearly 1000 visitors participated in this live public art project, building imaginative and gravity-defying structures.
In the weeks leading up to the festival, we designed with artist Marcus Rowlands and families from three schools in Bilborough, a cardboard building “module”. In essence, a box with a “secret corner” that could be popped in to join boxes together at interesting and unpredictable angles.
We've blogged about the project before: You can read more about the process, the event, and catch up on our live blog from the event itself.
We really enjoyed working on this project and are very proud of the results. This is largely down to our brilliant collaborators: Marcus Rowlands, Ruth Lewis-Jones from the Lakeside and — most importantly of all — the children, parents and staff from Portland, Melbury and Brocklewood schools.
Thanks also must go out for the generous support given by the Lakeside Arts Centre, the Arts Council England, Faspak, Staples and Nottingham Education Improvement Partnership.
The Lost Cuckoo live!
Follow the event at the Lakeside Arts centre live on our event mini-blog.
The Lost Cuckoo this weekend
2hd and Marcus Rowlands would like to invite you, your family and friends to come and take part in The Lost Cuckoo, an exciting outdoor public art installation.
For the last four months we have been working with families from three schools inthe Bilborough area of Nottingham. Together we have designed a cardboard construction module that can be assembled to build unusual structures and forms. The families will be on hand to share ideas and help with your creations.
This event is part of the International Children’s Theatre and Dance Festival happening at the Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham, on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th June from11am to 5pm.
You can download this printable poster to spread the word. We are looking forward to seeing you there!
This project is being supported by the Lakeside Arts Centre, the Arts Council England, Faspak, Staples and Nottingham Education Improvement Partnership.
Sandbox manual
As part of our submission for the Structures on the Edge competition, we created a fun model sandbox to illustrate the participative construction process for our Stranded installation. We invited the public to interact with the model and to play on a miniature dune, equipped with our scale prototypes of the facetted concrete sculpture and some toy tools.
Of course, we couldn't resist creating a little manual for the sandbox!
More information about our Stranded art installation on the Lincolnshire coast.
2hD in RIBA journal
A great article on East Midlands regional architecture practice has appeared in the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. It features 2hD's Alina Hughes talking about her dual roles in practice and education, and the importance for the region of retaining talented graduates.
See the online version of the RIBA Journal.
The Lost Cuckoo takes flight
In our first set of workshops we asked families to build with standard cardboard boxes and colourful tapes. They produced an amazing array of sculptures and spaces, pushing the boxes to do the unexpected and giving us plenty of inspiration to start the design of our special module.
Further workshops will run over the months until the Festival, on June 4th and 5th at the Lakeside Arts Centre.
This project is being supported by the Lakeside Arts Centre, the Arts Council England, Faspak and Nottingham Education Improvement Partnership.
Remote model making
We've just had an exciting collaboration with artist Tristan Hessing on a public art installation for the Lincolnshire coast (more about this project very soon...). Tom and Tristan have been working together in Nottingham to develop the form of the structure, while I was handling the CAD modelling and 3D renders from Belgrade.
As part of the project, we also needed to produce physical models of the facetted shape that Tristan had come up with. With a 3D computer model in Belgrade and a physical model to be built in Nottingham, how to communicate to Tom all the information he needed to quickly fabricate a physical object perfectly matching the numerical one?
The first stage was to check the geometry of the folding pattern with a paper net, which could be printed onto card with our office A3 printer. The Flattery plugin for SketchUp came in handy to explode the facets of the object and generate the tabs to glue the different pieces together. The rather complex geometry required that the net was split into 8 foldable panels, each with a different form.
To simplify the assembly, I colour-coded and labeled the facets and tabs, with some 3D orientation views to explain how the different pieces were meant to be glued together. I emailed Tom a PDF version of this net.
A few hours later, Tom video-conferenced me with the assembled model. So far so good. This paper model would later be spray-painted black and used for one of our models.
We then needed a durable plastic version that could be handled by the public and we called on to the expertise at the workshops at Nottingham Trent University — we both teach there part-time and Tristan is a graduate from their Fine Art school. I generated an STL file from the 3D model and sent it to the workshop, to be fed to their computer controlled milling machine. The idea was to manufacture a strong mould onto which thin plastic versions could be formed by vacuum.
Four hours passed and Tom called me from the workshop with the mould ready, CNC-machined from a solid block of MDF. Nice!
Tom then laboured hard with the workshop team to produce two perfect vacuum-formed plastic shapes. I received the images by email straight from the workshop.
This beats having a 3D printer directly connected to my laptop! Many thanks to the team at the NTU workshops for their expertise and help!
Read more about this project in our portfolio...
Inflatable events space debuts at Lille Museum of Modern Art
Alina and Thibaut are on site for the official opening of the Lille Museum of Modern Art and have been hard at work seeking opinion on — and taking photographs of — our inflatable event space in the grounds.
French Culture and Communications Minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, described it as “very beautiful” during an official tour of the reopened museum yesterday — after diverting from his official route to view the inflatable.
Alina spoke to artist Barbara Gaul (a.k.a. ANNAH), from Düsseldorf, Germany, who said: “The enjoyment with this wonderful pavilion is so great that everyone — despite the summer weather outside — wants to be inside it, and all faces are lit up with joy!”
She also spoke to guest Simone Few, who told her: “Not only is it functional but also very sensitive and protective”. Clearly a woman of excellent judgment and, as it turned out, wife of jazz musician Bobby Few.
For more information, see our press release section and our portfolio page about this project.
Event space interior view
Our event space for Lille Museum of Modern Art was inflated today — a process that took just 10 minutes. This is the first view of the interior, taken by Thibaut shortly after inflation and uploaded to our Flickr group for this project:
There is still a lot to do before the official opening tomorrow, including the installation of flooring, lighting and doors. The team are hard at work... but just two days ago it looked like this:
For more information, see our press release section...
