At Imperial College’s Sculpture Competition 2022, the aim was to design a community-centred sculpture for Imperial’s White City Campus inspired by the location’s history, modern culture, creative expression and values. My team drew inspiration from White City’s historical name origins and the modern influences such as the London Notting Hill Carnival.

As a team, we designed our sculptural-seating concept to encourage the community to come together and converse. The organic seating was designed to emulate sound waves of the words “white” and “city”, and the colourful bridge connects and represents White City’s diversity. Lights at the bottom create a glow at night.

Multiple voices were recorded saying “white city”, and the sounds were superimposed to create a waveform. These shapes were used to guide the shape of the sculpture seats, and the bridge was modelled and tested with different colours.

Small scale functional prototypes were created using 3D printing, clay, wood, LED lights and heat-formed coloured acetate to present the concept to the judges. Through this hands-on exploration and feedback, we realised that development was required to make the canopy structurally sound for the desired location.

Through further modelling explorations, we refined the seat’s form and shifted the canopy’s design to aid manufacturability and structural stability due to the environment’s wind tunnel. The position and dimensions were determined to suit human ergonomics and the location’s obstacles and health and safety limitations.

With this model, we experimented with several colour ways that fit the city’s history as well as Imperial College’s branding ecosystem. This sculptural design concept was successful in receiving full funding from Imperial’s President Community Fund and is now currently in progress to be manufactured and installed at the Imperial College London White City Campus.