London Design Festival today announces details of the Landmark Project Swivel by Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis and supported by Almacantar. Located at St Giles Square, in one of central London’s most traversed neighbourhoods, the long-term public project celebrates materiality and movement and will invite visitors to come together in the space. Known for her work in product, installation and spatial design, with a strong focus on materiality, research and experimentation, Marcelis’ designs are often viewed as experiences and encourage interchange between an object and its user.
Commissioned on the occasion of London Design Festival’s 20th anniversary, Swivel aims to bring colour and interactivity to St Giles Square, a vibrant new public space beside Tottenham Court Road. This area is a place of transition: from underground train links including the newly opened Elizabeth Line to performance venues; historical sites to experiential food halls. The installation will create a dialogue with local architecture including the Brutalist, Grade II listed Centre Point, one of the city’s first skyscrapers. Swivel will animate the environment, demonstrating the power of design to bring people together and providing visitors with an opportunity to connect, reflect, and enjoy. Juxtaposing natural materials with the surrounding concrete and glass, Marcelis’ installation creates a playground of seating that invites pedestrians to pause their journey. A series of ten unique seats will be crafted from a selection of travertines, quartzites and marbles sourced from Europe, the Middle East and Brazil in distinct colours and featuring unexpected hues and patterns. Each of the seats features a contrasting selection of stones chosen by the designer for their unique aesthetic. Using a ball bearing mechanism, the seats can be gently rotated, allowing visitors to interact in groups or create a solitary moment for themselves.
Sabine Marcelis, said: “This project, as with most of my work, is a celebration of materials. I wanted to respond to the space by injecting a bit of colour and fun into this urban environment. Deliberately choosing a natural material in a range of colours, I wanted to create a strong contrast with the surrounding architecture and the man-made material palette. Being an interactive piece, it welcomes audiences to decide how they would like to experience the space. It could encourage strangers to interact with each other, for friends to sit together or even allow people to create a moment of pause for themselves.”
Swivel is a large-scale public seating scheme which will remain in situ until November 2022. The seating will remain on the estate to be enjoyed by Londoners throughout the seasons.
Established in 2003 by Sir John Sorrell CBE and Ben Evans CBE, London Design Festival celebrates and promotes London as the design capital of the world. London Design Festival has since earned the reputation as a key calendar moment of London’s autumn creative season, alongside London Fashion Week, Frieze Art Fair and the London Film Festival, attracting the greatest thinkers, practitioners, retailers and educators to the capital, in a citywide celebration.
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