Studio Mieke Meijer has created a special festive light installation for Coal Drops Yard, the new Heatherwick Studio-designed shopping and restaurant district in King's Cross. The giant sculptural lights have been placed around Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square, and will be in situ through January 6, 2019.
The Space Frames are a dynamic installation that responds to the architecture of their location; tracing the arches and mimicking the graphic outlines of Coal Drops Yard's industrial structures. They act as landmarks, drawing visitors towards and beneath them and as beacons, visible across the landscape of Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square and beyond. Just as the recently opened Coal Drops Yard is a celebration of industrial engineering, so are the Space Frames similarly inspired by the timeless beauty of rigorous and functional industrial architecture. Roy Letterlé and Mieke Meijer of Studio Mieke Meijer cite the abandoned industrial buildings of their home town of Eindhoven as a direct influence on their work.
The interior of the Space Frames is a light but strong aluminum skeleton made from an innovative modular system invented by Studio Mieke Meijer. The frames are covered in an industrial polyester fabric more commonly used in the aviation industry. Remarkably, all of the Space Frames are handmade by the studio in its workshop. "We didn't just want to make a lamp, but more of a building system, from the same building block you can make a small object or a really large one," commented Meijer. For Coal Drops Yard, Studio Mieke Meijer have demonstrated that modularity by super-sizing their sculptures.
Photography: John Sturrock