client: Barratt London Ltd. | location: Hayes London size: 180 x 275 x 500 (h) | material: Painted bronze mounted on Powder Coated steel base | date: May 2019
Since 1934 the Nestle factory has been making coffee for the nation. At its height the production factory had 5000 people working for it and its sense of community as well as collective enterprise was reflected in both the architecture and the scale of the endeavour.
Over the past 15 years the site has been empty and is slowly being recolonized by the decaying and dismantling process of nature. What was once pristine factory has become an essay in emptiness, of things forgotten. Flooded floors, haunted industrial objects , open drawers with names still written on, spaces and corridors whose purpose and meaning is entirely lost. An epic poetry of loss.
The site is being redeveloped as a residential centre, but the layout and spacious structure, its history remain. Making Time has been commissioned by the developer as a centrepiece for the new site. Its form hints at the coffee pods that once filled the factory, the organic capsule of exotic taste that fuels our everyday existence. Drinking coffee marks a short moment of rest, a point where time for a moment slows. The sculpture is both a celebration of the site’s rich history and a reflection on our ability to re shape time according to our own needs. Sometimes time seems fleeting and swiftly passing, at others a slow almost stationary volume.
Watch the project come together…
Exploring the empty spaces…