Competition: Darwin Memorial

[sv]

These images show our design for a competition to design a public space to commemorate the 150 birthday of Charles Darwin in his home county of Shropshire, England. We have just found out this design won, and this will actually be built on the riverside made from a cast local stone.

The project was a joint entry from Architect Ranbir Lal & artist Colin Pearce, with ClustaSpace Ltd.

Being a project about Charles Darwin, we approached the design in a similar way to how we all understood evolution - small, cumulative changes to the existing form. Of course we had no means to evaluate the natural selection of the mutations apart from our own visual asthetic, so it's not really simulating natural selection, just a progression of ideas and forms through small cumulative steps. This is the winning result.

- bottom shape = final form
- other evolutions
- bench, main sculpture, bike rack
- animation frames







Additionally we also had a rapid prototype made from a low res 3dsmax file:

[DanielBrew]

Congratulations Steve,

Cool project to work on and nice renders especially the montage. Is it going to be a permanent installation and do you know when it is being built?

Dan

[RErender]

Natural selection? ha sounds more like intelligent design

[ruud3dv]

Excellent images, nice use of DOF on the closeup with 3d-people.

I was about to comment on the wonderful subsurface scattering in the last picture when i read about the rapid prototyping

[sv]

Congratulations Steve,

Cool project to work on and nice renders especially the montage. Is it going to be a permanent installation and do you know when it is being built?

Dan

It will be permament, there is a meeting on Monday to discuss the build as it might be reduced in size by about 20%, but the build will go ahead more or less immediately. This is I think the third project that the architect Ranbir Lal has won in the field of public spaces, so the same engineer's will be on board and they have all ok'd it and budgets have been put forward & more or less agreed.
This is a shot of a previous project we worked on together, which was built in Birmingham city centre, originally intended only for 3 months, but a year on it's still there! It's a tea house - you know us brits, we love our tea!


ruud - thanks; actually it's all Motion Blur but does give that effect when viewed as a still, not an animation.

[Jonferimonic]

Thats a really cool design and perfect for what its intended. I can see a lot of people trying to climb it.

[mcvltd]

Congrats Steve! Cool design and great renders. Any chance of getting a look at the animation?

[simon123]

hate to say it, you know what happend with the diana memorial! lawsuit waiting to happen.... cool pics!

[sv]

animation:
(sorry about the compression but you get the general idea)

http://develop.clustaspace.com/development/darwin/

if anyone gets asked for password / usernames, it's:

user: darwin
pass: clusta

[ene.xis]

i absolutely love that water...any tips?

[birdman67]

I love it, esp. the design itself...very aesthetically pleasing. Nice work!

[rmejia]

Nice design and renders, what material(s) is it going to be built with ?

[zoranm]

Good renders and nice job to work on. I like yur DOF usage.

Design is interesting but i didn't like the scale of the sculpure. I think that it's way too big for such a small square and surounding buildings.

Zoran

[giraffe]

Congratulations
Cool concept and good feeling of evolution of forms!!!
I like it so much!!!

[JeffG2]

Is this where the "Darwin Awards" are handed out?