the berkeley partnership

farringdon street, London, UK

The Berkeley Partnership has offices in both London and New York. Shortly after relocating to their new London offices on Farringdon Street I made an approach regarding artwork. We collaborated on several ideas primarily focusing on artwork for the open office and a client meeting room.

“We commissioned Alex to photograph the local area and produce a beautiful portfolio of black and white photos to celebrate the opening of our new office. The work is hung in our office and is beautiful. Alex worked with us to construct a really interesting brief and was a pleasure to work with throughout the process.”

Tom Parkin, Partner, The Berkeley Partnership

meeting room

In the meeting room there were two clocks on display showing the times in both London and New York. Extending this idea, I suggested a series of four framed photographs focusing on details of the two cities. A sign of Piccadilly Circus was paired with its New York counterpart; a sign of Times Square, and the two most iconic clock faces from each city were paired.

open office

When proposing ideas for the open office, there was a pre-framed old map of London to work into the theme. There was a preference to have some local imagery, and so I spent two days photographing details of the local area (including church doors, pub signs, local statues, street names). I then proposed a ‘historical’ selection of sixteen 30x30cm black and white prints (diasec medium) with the old map of London at the centre. This utilised the existing artwork and created a theme that complemented the old and new artwork.

internal rooms

There were two additional internal rooms for which I proposed artwork of London and New York. However, after consideration, there was a preference to have whiteboards in these rooms, rather than traditional artwork. This made me think: was there a way to combine the two? After research I discovered a company, Clarus, who were able to print images on the back of tempered glass which formed a whiteboard (a glassboard). Using glass, which is non-porous, would prevent staining of the surface over years of usage, which can occur on standard whiteboards. With this information I had to find a predominantly ‘white’ image so that the artwork had a dual purpose as a whiteboard. Since there were two identical rooms, I proposed an image of Nelson’s Column and an image of the Statue of Liberty; the two most famous statues in each city. This unique solution combined artwork and the practicality of a whiteboard, which I hope to use for future projects. I delivered the artwork myself and arranged and supervised professional art installation.