Children’s Eye Centre, Moorfields Eye Hospital

At the Children’s Eye Centre, we collaborated with two artists to enhance our design. Alison Turnbull joined the team to develop the louvres on the building’s main facade.

Her work draws inspiration from the Amsler Grid, used by opthamologists to test for macular degeneration. Patients who suffer from this affliction see a distortion when looking at the grid and her work overlays a distorted version of it onto the facade. This has created a functionally elegant piece that resolves specific shading requirements and which is accentuated by dramatic lighting at night.

It was very collaborative - I would bring my drawings to meetings and we’d discuss them and sometimes continue developing them together. I’d look at the architects’ drawings and balsa wood models and talk about how the blades might be constructed and fixed in place. And I persuaded them not to use colour on the metal louvers, and have three shades of different silver grey instead. Alison Turnbull, Artist

Yuko Shiraishi has created a large mural for the atrium. Her colourful work is based on a diagram showing the visual pathway between the brain and the retina. Extending over five floors, the piece forms a key part of the building’s wayfinding system with a different abstracted image on each level providing identity and coherence.