Gateways at Granary Square

A ceramic installation by designer Adam Nathaniel Furman announces the presence of the Designjunction exhibition

Visitors to the designjunction show (21–24 September) at King’s Cross during London Design Festival will be greeted by a large-scale installation by designer Adam Nathaniel Furman. ‘Gateways’, sponsored by Turkish Ceramics, consists of four tiled portals stationed in Granary Square, at the heart of the King’s Cross development.

With Central Saint Martins as backdrop, the four-metre-high colourfully-tiled gates incorporate a variety of architectural references, from London Underground Stations to Ottoman facades, and feature products by 30 different Turkish manufacturers.

“From the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, the Safavid facades of Isfahan’s Naqsh-e Jahan Square, and Sinan’s divine Ottoman mosques, to the maiolica cloisters of Santa Chiara in Naples, the gothic terracotta of the soaring Woolworth building in New York, and the famous red glazed ceramic Underground Stations of London, ceramics have always been, and continue to be, both the most historic, resonant and traditional, as well as the most fresh, perpetually surprising, delightful and exciting of architectural materials”, says Adam Nathaniel Furman. “There is no other architectural treatment that has remained as fresh, relevant and cool as ceramics has from a thousand years BC, right through into the twenty-first century”.

Gateways during fabrication

Architecture Today is a media partner of designjunction. Now in its seventh year, the event returns to its new long-term home in Kings Cross in an enlarged form, occupying five destinations including Cubitt House and Cubitt Park, The Canopy, Granary Square and The Crossing. The show will present more than 200 international design exhibitors (a mix of global furniture, lighting, accessory, material and technology brands), hundreds of product launches, 70 pop-up shops, bespoke installations as well as a programme of lively talks and debates throughout the show.