Rainbow Statue & After-Life

Pride Pop Up Installation

High Commendation Status

Competition hosted by:

London Festival of Architecture

Architecture LGBT+

St Anne’s Church Soho London

RIBA

Westminster Council

Design Description:

In recent years LGBT diversity has made great strides forward as a social force for good and has greatly impacted society’s landscape. Such fast change brings more creative power to artists, designers and architects.

The Face of Diversity:

Through this proposal, we’ve explored some of the most classic images in art and architectural history and extracted them into silhouettes. Further, the singular silhouettes are expanded into a dancing rainbow to express the notion of the wider spectrum of ‘us’ one people with a diverse social mix.

A Multi-Coloured Sandwich:

One end is the flat stainless steel panel in cut of Botticelli’s Venus without hair which transitions via Picasso’s Dancing to Le Corbusier’s Modulor Man at the other end. The two solid end panels can reflect the patina of the movement of people and the surrounding landscape. In between these two reflective ends are the colourful slices that are cut silhouettes ‘in motion’. We use the sense of motion to represent the transformation of society to a more diverse and accepting entity.

Visually the proposal creates a frozen moment of animation and transformation. The profile of the sculpture is joyful and festive to echo LGBT’s theme, Soho’s cultural context and the Pride event.

Day and night:

During the daytime, the sun casts the colourful rainbow shadow across the grass and the landscape becomes part of the sculpture. While walking along with the sculpture, visitors can see through the gaps between slices and see the extent of the garden and the reflection of the visitors on the colourful panels. At night the sculpture can be uplit, attracting visitors attention as they pass by St Anne Church garden in the evening.

Size:

Panel size 2.8 m (h) x 2.0 m (w) x 15 – 30 mm (T) for each panel.

Overall installation length 7.5 m.

Material and manufacture:

- The two end panels are stainless steel with mirror effect.

- The in-between panels are transparent colourful acrylic from recycled material.

Considering the material shortage, at the next detailed and manufacturing design stage the design will use more metalwork and reduce the colourful acrylic as a highlight in intervals.

- All pieces are CNC cut and made offsite to be transported and installed on-site.

- Use steel rods at the key points and foundation board to hold the sandwich slides for stability.

Afterlife:

To celebrate Pride Month 2022, for the competition’s ‘after life’ which is launched during COP26, we reflect on the idea of reusing the Rainbow Statue by transforming the acrylic pieces into:
1. a tree sculpture for public space as a meeting point and visual focus.
2. making lazy seatings around the tree sculpture or floatings on water, by blending the colourful acrylic panels disassembled out of the original Rainbow Statue sculpture into the base.