A touch of glamour has been introduced to Barking Town Square, east London, by way of 13 golden chandeliers hanging in an outdoor arcade. The shades, each one metre in diameter, are the result of a collaboration between Muf architects, Tom Dixon and electronics company Philips. Dixon’s design was originally a domestic prototype shown at Milan last year.
Muf principal Liza Fior approached the designer with the idea of using the product as the centrepiece of a new square, which meant working with Philips to adapt the design for outdoor use. The shades have three bulbs at the top to project a pattern of pentagons and hexagons onto the Edwardian-style, black-and-white terrazzo tiles of the arcade’s floor.
Barking Town Square is part of the Mayor’s 100 Public Spaces project and Muf’s first phase, now complete, includes a large, hard landscape of pink granite slabs that runs alongside the town hall. A folly of flowers, bricks and found objects sits at one end of it.
For the second phase, a soft landscape of mounds, woodlands and benches will run between a row of flats and shops and the public library adjacent to the arcade. Linking these two disparate environments, the arcade has been built along the recessed ground floor of the library.
images Laura Hino
