October 2021
June 2018
"A Piece of Sky" at Clerkenwell Design Week, London
MEDIA RELEASE
Sky-Frame will present A Piece of Sky, an installation designed by award-winning Swiss architect and designer Stephan Huerlemann, on view in the garden at St James Church during Clerkenwell Design Week 2018 (22-24 May 2018). This thought provoking installation aims to bring out positive feelings amongst visitors by telling a story about the sky and being in orbit. Transporting them for just a few seconds away from their hectic daily lives, visitors can think and even dream; and most importantly it will put a smile on their face.
Sky-Frame, the Swiss-based global leaders in frameless sliding door systems, has been collaborating on designs with Stephan Huerlemann since 2012, including an earlier installation, two trade fairs, point of sale concepts as well as assisting in the development of the new company headquarters. Stephan was keen that his new installation, A Piece of Sky, conveyed the intrinsic values of this state-of-the-art company on an abstract level, and most importantly within the confines that the space in the garden of St James Church presented.
Stephan Huerlemann’s wish was to bring a piece of the sky itself down to the surface of the earth, while at the same time transporting visitors into orbit and offering them a breathtaking view of the earth. In doing so the installation provides visitors with an opportunity to pause, in what is a relatively restless and heterogeneous place. In principal this is exactly what Sky-Frame does with its frameless sliding doors. The play on the word Sky from Sky-Frame is intended. Visitors to the installation walk-in to a hexagonal mirrored funnel that has a translucent surface at the funnel point, while reflected light from external spotlights create a huge sphere inside the funnel. The appearance of the sphere changes as the colour of the external spotlights change. Visitors to the installation are thus presented with a view of the earth from space and are able to view the sky from an unusal perspective – from above.
The sound concept emphasises this idea, as the background noise for the installation is the sound of the earth. Nasa used special equipment to record the electromagnetic vibrations caused by the earth’s rotation and made them audible to the human ear. A pedal on the floor of the installation allows visitors to play recordings of astrounauts talking about what they think and feel when they see the earth from space. (Credit: Nasa Voyager Space Sounds, Album: Symphonies of the Planets, Track: Song of Earth).