Hairywood Covent Garden 4
Hairywood Covent Garden (LFA 2008)
In association with and part of Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture at Somerset House, with 6A architects.
Hairywood was the first installation commissioned by the Architecture Foundation to launch its new gallery on Old Street. A 6a, Eley Kishimoto collaboration, Hairywood created a temporary public space and landmark for four months in the summer 2005.
The tower creates a threshold into the new gallery space from which to watch the world go by, and offers an escape from the hard surfaces of Old Street. The small space at the top, lined with printed timber and upholstery, is like a fragment of private space open to the street. The exterior, clad with plywood, laser cut with Eley Kishimoto's pattern of Rapunzel's hair allowing dappled light into the interior during day and lit from within by night, glows like a lantern.
The Summer House is a playful challenge of how to re-imagine the possibilities of public space from a new perspective.
The pattern used for Hairywood, the 'Rapunzel' print from the 'Dark Wood Wander' collection, a story inspired of a princess trapped in a tower, who escapes and flees through a dark wood only to find her own fairytale castle in flames.