Architects: Avanti, London. Design Bureau, Derby.                                               photos: Sarah Blee

New pathology and academic buildings, Southmead Hospital, Bristol, UK.                             

The initial brief for this project was for a scheme to be printed on the glass walls of a long corridor of a semi-public building  to provide the required amount of screening and/or privacy. This has now become a project involving two large text-based wall paintings in the entrance lobbies of both buildings, as well as printed glass screening  and supergraphics.

“Our initial visits to the laboratories at Southmead Hospital left the distinct feeling that any art intervention, as a tribute to the important work being carried out on a day-to-day basis, should reflect the atmosphere of investigation and discovery.  To this end, each of the lobby art works incorporate the name of the new building in the form of an enlarged dotted type-face which has been repeated and overlayed at varying intervals to form a pattern which is reminiscent of digital computer print-outs or DNA mapping. The text is not immediately apparent and as such they are not meant to function as signs but with a little patience the words reveal themselves to the curious and help give each building its own, separate identity. “