Art can play a significant role to play in bringing a building to life. It can contrast or harmonise with the architecture to create a visual dialogue around scale, materiality, or creativity.

It can add meaning to a building, shedding light on its historic or cultural origins or by telling the stories of the people who will use it. It can create a humanising fulcrum for engagement with the building, knitting it into the wider public realm to enhance placemaking.

Our buildings have often featured art, whether as stand-alone pieces set into key spaces after completion, or as a deeper collaboration between architect, client and artist, integrating art into the concept of the building itself.

The Wellcome Trust Headquarters, London
The spectacular 10-storey atrium within this new headquarters for the Wellcome Trust, provided the perfect setting for a commissioned artwork which could express the Trust’s mission and its commitment to promoting biomedical art. Thomas Heatherwick’s crystalline sculpture echoes the materiality of the building and features 142,000 glass spheres suspended on 27,000 high tensile steel wires. We worked closely with Thomas and his team to devise the means by which the sculpture - 15 tonnes of glass and just under a million metres of wire - could be erected in and supported by the building.

We also devised a series of “art windows” at street level, to accommodate temporary installations to reflect the themes for the Trust’s dynamic learning programme and animate the street outside.

Evelina Children’s Hospital, London

Integrated art was a key feature of our non-institutionalised children’s hospital.

A range of site specific artworks were commissioned to integrate with the architecture to help make children of all ages feel welcome and to provide the best environment for recovery and rehabilitation.

Children were consulted about what they wanted to see in the hospital and in a number of cases were activity involved in the creative process. Altogether fifteen artists have created a portfolio of truly original pieces for the hospital such as the Starslide helter-skelter for the outpatients waiting area, dazzling mosaics which glitter in corridors and poetry from Roger McGough and school patients which line the walls.

Over 142 languages are spoken in this London hospital and art and architecture were seamlessly integrated to promote wayfinding, building organization, and the possibility of bringing energy, joy, distraction and stimulation into the hospital environment.

Frick Chemistry Laboratory, Princeton
The commissioning of this piece was part of Princeton’s long-term initiative to increase the presence of art in new buildings across the campus.

‘Resonance’ by Kendall Buster, is a site-specific sculpture designed for the Frick’s 27-foot-wide atrium, which creates a dialogue with the parameters of the long, narrow, sky-lit space within which it sits. Six groups of ovoid-shaped forms are suspended on stainless steel aircraft cable and attached to the structural steel beams of the building. Built with lightweight industrially powder-coated steel frames and covered in semi-transparent outdoor shade-cloth, the surface of each form allows light to both penetrate and reflect. Referencing the work of the laboratory, the interconnected ovoid semi-transparent forms were in part inspired by models used to represent molecular structures,

‘Rather than create a singular moment within a given region of the building I chose to configure the forms to engage the space completely both horizontally and vertically - in plan and elevation’

Kendall Buster

UCLH Macmillan Cancer Centre, London
The Macmillan Cancer Centre provides a welcoming and comfortable centre in which patients receive a variety of treatments. Here, art has a major role to play in creating a therapeutic environment, calming anxiety and contributing to an uplifting and positive ambience. We worked closely with

the Centre to commission and integrate a number of artworks from a large central piece hung in the entrance space to art pieces incorporated into the floor of each reception area on the upper floors.

Portcullis House, London
Portcullis House was opened in 2001 to provide additional office space and public Committee rooms for members of parliament and their staff. Although the House of commons and the House of Lords share ownership of the historic Parliamentary Art Collection, this new building was an opportunity to commission a number of contemporary artworks and the building now houses one of the UK’s largest contemporary textiles. We worked closely with the client to select artists and design pieces which would directly enhance the acoustic performance of the spaces.