Boxpark commissioned Terraform to create a large-scale light installation for the opening of Boxpark Croydon on 30 October 2016 — the shipping-container food, drink and music venue’s arrival in East Croydon.
Two nights, two very different shows
The opening ran across two nights hosted by NME and Eskimo Dance respectively — an indie music brand and a grime institution, wanting quite different things from the same room.
The installation had to serve both without being re-rigged between them. We built a large backdrop to the main stage and added bespoke pieces around the main staircase, treating the whole event space as the canvas rather than just the stage wall.
A wall that faced both ways
Working with Boxpark, we used the park’s own architecture to carry a large cube wall on the top deck, outside.
It was designed to read from 360 degrees: visible inside the main event space, and at the same time facing outward to announce the venue’s arrival to East Croydon. One structure doing a job on both sides of the building — for the crowd who had come, and for everyone who had not.
Handing over to the lighting director
Once the installation was built and tested, control of all 52 cubes was handed to the event’s main lighting director.
That meant the stage lighting and the cubes ran from one desk and stayed synchronised through every performance, rather than the installation running its own loop alongside the show. It is how we prefer to work on a live event: build it, prove it, then give it to the person running the night.
