Did you know that Clerkenwell in London has the highest number of architects per square mile in Europe? If you’re a London architect, you probably did, otherwise we bet you didn’t. By our reckoning thousands of people have just learned something. We Heart is brilliant isn’t it? Anyway, back to the matter at hand, and this rather splendid symbol of Clerkenwell’s architectural eminence, the Heart of Architecture by Giles Miller Studio, based just down the road in Spitalfields.
Commissioned for Clerkenwell Design Week for this week’s show, the installation is appropriately enough right in the middle of things at the equally splendid but much older St John’s Gate. Giles Miller Studio is a specialist in surfaces, and has used its talents to great effect with this installation, working with fabricators Tecan to construct the Heart from an intricate pattern of thousands of steel and brass plates. Thanks to clever sequencing and varying angles, the Heart uses light, shadow and reflection, not to mention that imposing monastic gate behind it, to create an effect which shifts with the viewer’s perspective. A shining example of British creativity.
Photography, Jon Meade
