St Edward has commissioned leading British sculptor Nick Hornby to create a monumental 3.5m bronze work to stand at Royal Warwick Square.
The public artwork, Do It All, will be unveiled in 2023 on completion of the Warwick Road Masterplan, which will deliver more than 1,000 mixed-tenure homes for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
The striking piece includes the silhouette of the nearby Albert Memorial, and references the postmodern Egyptian-revival Homebase that used to occupy the site.
Hornby's design for Do It All
Due to complete next year, Royal Warwick Square will include a new primary school, 190 Extra Care homes, commercial space, playspace and a linear park for locals to enjoy.
Paul Vallone, Executive Chairman of St Edward said "We wanted public art that nodded to the past, but also connects with the future to join this piece of architectural history. This fascinating sculpture will sit right at the heart of the scheme, providing a point of curiosity to draw people into the linear park and enjoy a quiet moment away from the bustling Kensington High Street.”
Nick Hornby said: ‘The Homebase was an eccentric faux-Egyptian temple to DIY, an activity that is British, like tea-drinking or the Last Night of the Proms. The connection with Homebase intersected brilliantly with the Royal Warwick Square link to Howard Carter. Carter was an Egyptologist and archaeologist: he excavated Tutankhamen, whereas this is a site where an Egyptian-revival building was levelled and buried. That story—an inverted excavation—resonates with my process. In excavation, 3D objects emerge; in my work, that transformation is reversed and instead it is an image that emerges from a 3D form’.
Computer Generated Image of Royal Warwick Square
Find out more about the new places that Berkeley Group is creating here.