Royal Domain Tower Art Facade

The Royal Domain Tower Art Façade was designed by studio505 in collaboration with Australian artist Geoff Nees. Awarded 2009 Best Contribution to Urban Art by the City of Port Phillip, the art façade is an addition to the exclusive Royal Domain Residential Tower on St Kilda Road in Melbourne.

 Clad over 5 storeys of car park the new façade is an artwork of monumental urban scale that retains the elegant simplicity and subtle complexity possible in cut skin relief sculptures. studio505 developed a design where geometric spirals intersect and transfer their geometries to one another creating an eternal flow across the surface. The composition is a giant constellation; a great swirling mass of actions in a field of molten cosmic matter. It remains a simply cut and peeled surface, yet it evokes the complexity of wind and turbulence, linkage and attraction, botanical geometries, and of sublime understandings that reside just under the surface of material things.

The art facade is made up of a series of stainless steel sheets with intricate laser cut petals hand folded outwards. Spiraling mandalas are made up from a series of petals each varying in size. The folded petals provide natural ventilation to the five storey car park behind. The stainless steel captures the ambient light about it, folding it and warping it into a dynamic and alive surface, continuously changing with the viewer and environment. Like a sundial, the relief serves to record the effect of light, creating a secondary composition of shadows across its surface. In the evening the façade is lit entirely by borrowed light. All 25,000 petals were physically peeled out by hand in a workshop over a three week period. Light is paramount to the reading of the work and in a sense can be seen as its primary concern, despite and because of the fact that no specific lighting is required for the project.

AWARDS

City of Port Phillip - Design Development Award 2007
Best Contribution to Urban Art

此项目与澳洲当地艺术家Geoff Nees 合作，在2009年被评为 Port Phillip区最佳贡献公共艺术奖。艺术墙附属于坐落在墨尔本St Kilda路的高端住宅大厦Royal Domain Residential Tower.

外墙覆盖五层停车场建筑，新外形的规模具有都市纪念意义，有如浮雕般简洁优雅又不失微妙的复杂性。结构由一系列不锈钢镶板组成，以镭射激光打造出25000多片错综复杂的花瓣图案，手工向外折叠。不需额外灯光，表面反射的光线就足以使图案生动跳跃，这也是设计中很重要的一点。