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  Taking shelter in public art |
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 | Reported by guardian.co.uk
on Wednesday, 21 October 2009
(on October 21, 2009) |
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Vast wooden head, jumbo chairs and UK's highest bike hut installed on trail around Kielder reservoirAudio slideshow: Kielder art trailEurope's biggest art gallery has taken delivery of more than 50 tonnes of sculptures for a trail that opened this week in the forests of northern England.A vast wooden head and jumbo chairs that rotate in sequence like the blades of Chinook helicopter are among the new sights around Kielder reservoir, between the Scottish border and Hadrian's Wall.Including the country's highest mountain bike hut, designed by the London architect David Adjaye, the artworks double as shelters for thousands of visitors from all over the world."The commissions specified the need for practical protection from the sort of weather we sometimes get here," said Peter Sharpe, curator of the Kielder forest art and architecture programme.
Adjaye's subtle siting of his shelter, wrapped in mist next to an RAF low-flying beacon on the 580-metre (1,900ft) summit of Deadwater Fell, bears out the twin roles of each piece."It's a striking piece of architecture, but it gives bikers and walkers real protection.
You'd get cold very quickly up here if you stopped for a rest, without Adjaye's design to protect you," Sharpe said.Adjaye, who also has offices in Berlin and New York, has louvred one side of the neat, stained-wood building to resemble Kielder's ranks of tall, straight pines, and made a funnel inside to keep out winds from all directions.
The same principles guide the spruce creation Silvas Capitalis (Forest Head), by the US architects Simparch.
It melds with a stand of Sitka spruce close to one of the landings for the lake's ferry, hire boats and private yachts."You can watch from here without being seen," said Sharpe, clambering up the back of the head to peer from its carved-out eyes.
"Over the winter, the ears will be cut open and wooden trumpets installed, so that visitors can sit in here and listen to the amplified sounds of the forest."The camouflage of some of the art is turned on its head by the shiny metal rotating chairs and 55/02, a vivid orange art shelter by sixteen*(makers), a consortium from London's Bartlett school of architecture.
Like a cluster of steel mushrooms, the piece - which is named after the map co-ordinates for its lakeside site - has sections that visitors can move to keep out draughts when the wind changes.The project continues a tradition at Kielder, run and funded by the Forestry Commission, Northumbria Water and One North East, the regional development agency.
Artists and architects combined last year to create the Kielder observatory, whose two telescopes enjoy England's least light-polluted skies, and a series of light-hearted belvederes.Gallerygoers need energy: the lake trail winds for 27 miles and the entire park covers 62,000 hectares (239 square miles).
But they appreciate it.
"We get visitors from all over the world," said Yvonne Riley, serving up flapjacks to a party from Kuwait in the Kielder Castle cafe.
"They trek out to look at the artworks and they all come back with something to say."
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