May 2023 – in colour: on the inside
The inside of the Twin Dome at various stages of its transformation.
As mentioned in the earlier blog – Letting the light in – for practical reasons the new window really needed to be installed facing directly due east and therefore, in some settings and with some events, I could see that early mornings in the Twin Dome could be quite a thing. In the planning of new installation “in colour” I also knew that we needed to maximise as much of the daylight as possible (the absolute opposite of any normal observatory) and that, with the planned structure of the installation, we should also be able to experience the passage of sunlight across the period of a day.
In terms of making as much of the light as we could there were two ideas that got thrown into the mix. Firstly the old blue/grey paint over all of the interior walls obviously had to go. The new covering would be white and there was absolutely no need to fret about subtle shades such as “white whisper” or “ancient starlight” (actual paint colours). Bog standard, brilliant white was exactly what was needed and big buckets of it everywhere. The second idea would be more dramatic but a lot less easy to achieve. We decided to install a large surface of mirror and we had the perfect place for it. The inside of the actual dome is a fabulous, geometric example of glulam (Glued laminated timber) and very much something to be admired. However, the underside of the shutter section was way less appealing. A lot of leaking oil had stained the surface over the decades and where water had leaked in things looked even worse. This whole area would give us almost 10 square metres of curved ceiling and after a couple of days at the top of a scaffold tower the grimy old shutter was transformed into a very striking curved mirror full of wonderful and weirdly shaped reflections – and a lot of light. Now to put the art in it.