In the summer of this year, an international law firm launched a competition through Central Saint Martin’s Art College to commission new art pieces for their central London office. The organisation’s brief was to reflect their global and local presence with two murals.
Competition winner, Giulia Cacciuttolo (a fine art student at Central Saint Martin’s Art College), took inspiration from the 40 cities around the world in which the international law firm is based. Her winning concept combined the idea of sand movement across borders using NASA earth elevations.
“The concept on which I decided to focus my research was the idea of borders: I started to research sand migration patterns as sand is able to migrate without taking borders into account. Thanks to a NASA satellite mission using new technology – synthetic aperture radar and interferometry – we were able to obtain the most accurate to date Digital Elevation Model of Earth’s surface. I was fascinated by the technology and the images obtained with it and I decided to incorporate them in my work for this commission.” – Giulia Cacciuttolo
Each city had a sandbank located and then a digital elevation model of that exact spot produced. Two murals were created; one representing ‘the global’ – with a pattern of the 40 cities – the other representing ‘the local’ – with an image of the London location.
Giulia’s vision was to bring these striking images to life through back-lit Corian® panels, and Cutting Edge were the experts she turned to.
Working with Giulia, Kevin Hoy, Cutting Edge Founder, assisted in the development of the project from concept to creation. Design Engineer Alessio De Mitri translated the cities’ data from 2D to 3D, supplying a 3D CAD model for each mural.
A plywood backboard was created to locate the 640 LED lights and a 6mm clear acrylic framework was used to house the Corian® panels.
12mm Glacier White Corian® sheets were then cut into squares and intricately CNC machined and hand-finished to give the desired pattern and textured effect of the earth’s movement throughout the 40 cities.
Finally, after approximately 6 months from start to finish, the murals were dramatically back-lit and installed on site for a striking effect.
“Working on the realisation of the two Corian® murals was a new and challenging experience for me. Thanks to the valuable support of Alessio De Mitri, the Design Engineer, and Cutting Edge’s staff, I reached the result that I was hoping to achieve. Corian® is a brilliant material to work with and Kevin (Cutting edge founder) helped me to push its potential. The possibilities to use it for artworks are potentially endless and I am sure that we will see amazing pieces of art realised with it in the near future.” – Giulia Cacciuttolo
We thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of completing the visually stunning murals, designed and intricately machined by hand, using the latest technology. With many years’ experience of delivering unusual commissions and bespoke design for the likes of the V&A, Zaha Hadid Architects, Redbull, Marks & Spencer and BMW, no challenge is too big for our team.
Please see our other interesting commissions and projects we’ve completed
