Creative processes
The school is located almost next door to High Woods Country Park and Bruce's overarching idea for his proposals is to bring some of this natural environment into the fabric of the new school building. The first evidence of this will be seen on approaching the school when visitors will pass through a line of cast silver birch trees which hold up the overhanging roof.
Bruce proposes that the door handles will not be selected from a catalogue but collected from the forest floor by children from Mylands and North Primary Schools. The selected branches will be cast in bronze and transformed into door handles. The bronze itself will change colour and brightness as it is constantly handled by thousands of hands.
The corridor which runs down the centre of the building is the route to all classrooms. It is lit by natural daylight which comes through a number of skylights. Here light will be filtered through laser cut steel grills which mimic the tree canopies of High Woods. Photographs taken in the woods by the children and Bruce will be arranged in layers to cast dappled shadows across the corridor.
Bruce is also developing ideas for other areas of the school in partnership with the architect. Ideas include printing images on the glass classroom partitions and outdoor sculptures.
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“I had imagined that I would be making one large artwork for the school but in fact, the project has grown and developed in unexpected ways. This growth has come from a formal and informal exchange with teachers, pupils, the architects, material specialists and park rangers. Some ideas have fallen by the wayside but others are flourishing through our collaborative endeavour.”
Bruce Williams
“We have been thoroughly enjoying our dialogue with the artist and believe that his input will add a layer of richness to the scheme. For example, we are eagerly anticipating the effect of the artist's proposed leaf design to the underside of the skylights within the corridor to the classroom block that will transform this circulation space in terms of daylight and shadowing.”
Michael Florides, bhp architects
