Design for Rail Diversions
2009

Looking around the area of Grafton Square it occurred to me that railings were a part of the vernacular, often without function. Since the section of the building to be decorated had a natural place for railings (already featured in the street below) to front a recess in which any other ornamentation would be partially masked I thought that a regular railing would provide the ideal basis for periodic variations. The continuum is broken at intervals by sections in which a group of railings so to speak ‘take a walk’, always starting and ending at one of the regular intervals. Thus severity and freedom could be combined. Behind the interlacing twists and turns lies the echo of calligraphy, a vertically based runic writing with of course, in the framework of theme and variation, a parallel with music and its regular stave and bar lines.