As part of the Friar Street Environmental Improvements.

Sponsored by Marks and Spencer

inauguration January 2005

Context

Friar Street is a key street within Reading. It links the recently restored nineteenth century Town Hall at the east end to what will be Reading's largest purpose built development - the Chatham Place scheme - in the west. Always an important shopping street, in recent years Friar Street has been affected by the shift in focus of the retail area southward towards the Oracle and Broad Street. Nevertheless Friar Street has interesting mixed use which includes retail in the east through residential and commercial to the Grade 1 listed Greyfriars Church in the west.

Art at the Centre has worked with David Moore, Reading Borough Council's Landscape Architect, to create an opportunity for an artist to contribute to this scheme. David Ward's appointment to the project has been made possible in part by an award from the Royal Society of Arts Art for Architecture Scheme.

Project

The Friar Street refurbishment is driven by a transport strategy plan which aims to create a successful environment in which people can move around with ease on foot, by bus or on bicycle. A successful resolution of this project will enable access from north to south as well as east to west and will create an environment that will work efficiently in transport terms.

The artist has had a longstanding interest in the work of Sir John Soane, and coincidentally Friar Street has particular connections with this eminent nineteenth century architect who was born in Reading. In developing their design proposals for the street David Ward and David Moore make reference to the chequer-board brickwork found on many of the town's churches and to the geometric fourteenth century tiles in Greyfriars Church, but their overriding inspiration is from Soane.

Of particular interest here is Soane's use of light and coloured glass in many of his buildings. Out of this has developed the key design theme for the proposal to light the two significant stained glass windows at either end of Friar Street - in the Waterhouse Chamber of the Town Hall and on the southern side of Greyfriars Church. The intention is to illuminate these windows from the inside in order to project their unique colour into the street. Ward and Moore have been keen to find ways of linking the two ends of Friar Street and drawing attention away from the floor of the street where the traffic and the bustle dominate. By diverting our gaze upwards to the first and second storeys of the buildings, emphasis will be given to the wide variety of interesting architectural styles where the street's sense of history really lies.

Ward and Moore have identified a number of buildings (and in some instances particular windows within them), which they would like to draw attention to by the addition of a lit pane of coloured handmade stained glass. The glass will be built into made-to-measure units, which will also incorporate a low power LED light source. The unit can then be clipped to the window frame and plugged into the mains by a three-pin plug. The lights will be installed with a solar time clock, will have a seven-year life and will run on low power rating. The light will give a constant bright glow, creating the equivalent of a colourful musical stave along the street at night.

Artist

David Ward has completed several major commissions for the public domain - most recently in Wolverhampton, Coventry, Lowestoft and Cambridge. His work is in many national collections and he has exhibited and performed widely. He has undertaken residencies at Durham Cathedral, Harvard University, King's College Cambridge and, as the Henry Moore Research Fellow, at the Centre for the Study of Sculpture in Leeds. He has curated shows - most notably The British Art Show in 1990 - and he has published writings on other artists' work. He is currently a visiting lecturer at the Architectural Association.