Make Way is a Sculpture and Public Realm transformation that was commissioned in 2019 when I was working for New Practice in Glasgow. Sustrans commissioned the work with the New Gorbals community to celebrate the opening of the opening of the South City Way cycle route which connects users from the South of Glasgow into the City Centre.
Design
The design of this sculpture is all about interacting with users as they pass it. The road is a busy bus route and now with the addition of the South City way cycle route, it is a place which is passed at often. The four elements of the sculpture are individual powder-coated steel fins which all line up at one junction as users pass the site, they needed to be as bright individual pieces which can be seen even if passing in motion. The public realm transformation includes the install of three new bicycle stands which are placed on their own recycled glass orange substrate which claims the structure as part of the sculpture.
Community
Make Way was designed with the help of local primary school groups who participated in workshops and collaborated with us to experiment with shape and colour. The younger children in their community were extremely excited about having a new sculpture in the New Gorbals and we invited a number of them to come to the opening of the sculpture which they helped design.
Construction
As joint lead designer of the project, I worked on the design from the concept stages through to producing drawings for manufacturing and project managing the build on site. We worked with Scott Associates (Sculpture and Design) on the manufacturing process and instillation of the steel structures, including the orange bicycle racks.
Each steel plate is designed to maximise the size of a standard steel sheet and ensure as little waste material was made in construction.
