Tom Gallant -- ROTTERDAM-DESIGN

ROTTERDAM

Public art commission, Pendrecht, Rotterdam-Zuid.

2015 -2018

Kamiel Verschuren, Laurien Dumbar, Thijs Ewalts and Tom Gallant

After viewing the site, the first thing that struck us was that it was important to deal with both internal and external conditions in order to give the artwork to the residents and public viewers; during the day and at night.

Our first decision was to make a visual story that played with the journey through the height of the window, the buildings and streets. This would be an exercise in narrating different themes through appropriating imagery found in books and online searches; playing with historical timelines, discoveries, social changes and environmental transformations.

The key to our design strategy followed a practical concern that during the day you would not be able to see anything from the outside, similar to church windows. Taking cues from the building details, we decided that the external print had to be white and linear; diagrams, instructional illustrations, maps etc...

This gave us a composition within which to collage images and play with framing, colour transitions and details. The white layer was printed on one pane and on the other, the colour was printed with an additional black print. These were then glued together to form the laminated panels.

The project began in 2015 with the design for the first building and has continued each year with the last set of windows finalised in February 2018. In June 2018 there will be a presentation of the artwork at Tent, Rotterdam.

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