The project began as a study of the ancient drove roads and sweet routes such as the Icknield Way. After much sketching and exploring the final suite of site furniture evolved into a series of standing stone monoliths. Rock art patterns were perforated into the corten steel panels and direct printed aluminium was used as the basis for the graphic panels.
I was interested in the standing stone shapes you see today - probably they started off as more regular shapes but over time the weathering has caused them to become diverse and irregular. So in a way I wanted the monolith wayfinding to look like they have always been there. Whilst the shape os quite unusual and dramatic they do fit into the space as if they are weathered stone - of course the watering steel (corten) helped with that.
Rock art is specific to location so the wayfinding monoliths did cheat a bit - I used rock art pattern from some Irish standing stones - the patterns are so beautiful and intriguing. It was a challenge to re-create and by perforating small holes into the corten using waterjet the illusion of weathered rock art was achieved.
Building the monoliths required specialist construction and I went to a pretty special company in Toulouse for this part of the job. After that I worked with my local makers, joinery and steel to create the fingerposts and wayfinder posts. We used corten and FSC Sapeli timber - most timbers do not work well with corten as the rust can react with the timber resins.
This wasn’t a quick job nor was it without issues and problems. The combination of materials made it quite challenging but achievable. In terms of the graphics though this was more straightforward. I chose simple icons, and a more complex wildlife journey. The wildlife journey was all about the flora and fauna you might see along the path and was created as nature book in a fold out Moleskine sketchbook.
Once the nature journey was completed I then took extracts of this and incorporated them into the panel design. The idea being that at any given time you might some of the wildlife included. The sentiments expressed in the sketches are a mix of observations, poetry and notes that both express how I feel about the route but also, of course, displays my love of nature.
