The Waiting Room

Waiting is  transitional point of activity between moments. Our first thoughts of how we wait is in a dull, lightless, lifeless room with uncomfortable seating, or stood up staring at a bright repetitive screen, rigid in order and almost robotic. The same feeling is in the area of Canary Wharf, where everything, from the architecture to the clothing is so new and undisturbed it lacks the spontaneity of true human life. The design for 'The Waiting Room' therefore, is to shake up the usual order and rigidity, and create a space that provokes curiosity, purposefully engaging interaction through sense and illusion. It is to rekindle the lost playful spirit into the population of Canary Wharf.

Architecural Drawings

City Hall, Norman Foster and Partners, London

The Hoover Building

 Wandsworth Council Blocks

 Tate Modern, Turbine Hall

London College of Communication

Urban Playground: D&AD Environmental Design Entry

   This is the entry we submitted for the D&AD Student Design competition for Environmental Design. The brief was to design a space to link the interior of a building or structure with the exterior using Formica products, so we came up with a self supporting shelter that can transform and be customised to an enclosed space to an open public one that can be moved around to create a personalised arrangement of furniture. We realised that there is little stimulating exterior environments that people can go and use, say just to sit and have their lunch, especially in the urban environment that doesn't involve the ordinary park bench-type seating. The structure of the playground revolves around a simple box of glass which can be pushed around and altered manually to create a new dynamic and function: to create new shelters, new divisions, privacy, openness. The area is covered with 'pop-up' seating that can be arranged into groups or individual environments, and is again controlled manually. This type of public area offers colourful new stimuation, fun and encourages social interaction and is designed to dissolve formal inhibitions.

   We thought it was a great idea, too bad we didn't make publishing! Next year maybe!