Mike Smith Studio

The brief for the project was to work closely with Troika to develop the form which would be the ‘Cloud’, to produce the object and then install it within the space above the escalators at T5. This involved some considerable thought as there were many constraints to fulfill. The skin had to be populated with the 4800 discs which form the animated surface. The interior of the form needed to contain all of the hardware and wiring to control the movement of the discs. The discs needed to be removable from the outside for maintenance. The surface of the skin needed to be as seamless as possible. The solution was to build a form from CNC machined strips of aluminum which were welded into the form of the cloud, each location of every disc was also cut in the surface to enable the correct location of the discs which are individually controlled. It was a great project to produce and the result looks quite effortless.