one line | oliver barratt sculpture

Number One Hyde Park is a building that faces both the city and the open green spaces of the park. Its design philosophy addresses the need within the most urban of spaces to remember the natural world.

The Greek god Pan represented in the Epstein sculpture also acts of a reminder of the power of the natural world. In his sculpture Epstein depicts Pan springing forward, his back to the city jumping into the greery and open spaces of the park accompanied by a family group of mother father and child, their dog barking excitedly at the front. The exaggerated limbs and deliberate forward dynamic articulate this ancient pull towards the green.

My proposal addresses both the building and its immediate environment. The openness of its form and its lightness of touch is a direct response to the structural mass of the two pillars that frame the work. The sculpture is a dynamic undulating line that plots a balletic gesture in space. A type of calligraphic movement captured in the air, tracing a line that is both poised and energetic. Its’ meaning obscured its purpose direct. Both in its verdant pallet and natural lines the sculpture forms a bridge between the natural world of the park and the enclosed built world of the foyer, bringing glimpses of the organic into the entrance of the building.

The work is a reply to the city and the building. It shares the same bronze material as the buildings facade but it is articulated it in fluid highly modelled forms that echo the interwoven rhythms of nature.

At times the sculpture is a three dimensional image of Persian calligraphy, at others the microscopic filigree of a living thing. The beginning and the end woven into each other. Perpetually in movement yet always still. The work has a strong material presence but hints at the immaterial fleeting world of the unknown. It is a serendipitous hymn in the heart of the city.