When does a bandstand become a piece of public sculpture?

The summer festival at London’s Southbank is an annual expression of the site’s incredible design heritage, which can be traced back to the Festival of Britain in 1951. We collaborated with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and a group of architecture students to design and realise a bandstand structure for the Festival of the World, a three-month celebration of global cultures in 2012.

'We wanted the structure to reflect the multicoloured variety of the festival, which represented every country of the world'

Situated on the public plaza outside the Royal Festival Hall, the bandstand played a central role, acting as a focal point for a series of public exhibitions. The design made use of an existing steel post, which we dressed with petal-like elements reaching up to the sky. As a piece of public sculpture, it needed to be both robust and quick to build: it was designed, developed, fabricated and erected within three months.