Dance

Designed for The Stevens Competition for Architectural Glass Design 2018 hosted by The Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass.

Brief: To design two windows for the Dance Studio at Eastbourne College

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Artists Statement

 

The design of the windows incorporates stances used in both classical ballet and contemporary dance thus encouraging creativity and cross-disciplinary practice within the co-educational shared space. The bold and youthful design injects colour into what would otherwise be a very white room. Where the colours overlap further shades are created. The concept illustrates the principles of teamwork and supporting one-another through participation, key values that are encouraged at Eastbourne College.

 

This deceptively simplistic design will be constructed from both clear and transparent coloured glass that is water jet cut into shapes that would be impossible to cut by hand. These are then fused together to form the two separate panels that will be placed in-between the internal and external glazing. The reverse will be lightly sandblasted to reduce glare, yet will still allow soft light and colourful shadows to be projected into the space in the late afternoon sun from the westerly facing windows.

 

The years 1867 and 2017 will be gilded onto the windows to mark the 150th anniversary of the college’s foundation, and the Arnold Embellishers’ logo will be fused onto each panel using a coloured decal.

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Technical Statement

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I designed this using a combination of hand drawing and digital software including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Rhino3D.

The left panel is comprised of two layers of clear and coloured glass, whereas the right uses four. This could be simplified to reduce cutting and material costs at the slight expense of aesthetics.

The sample panel uses a single layer of four transparent coloured glasses and clear rolled Bullseye glass. Another panel of clear glass was fused on top to form a strong 6mm thick panel. I chose to use Bullseye Glass due to its wide range of compatible fusing colours.