2LG Studio celebrates 10 years with SPECTRUM installation

Posted in Events, News on 21 October, 2024

In collaboration with London Design Festival, 2LG Studio creates an immersive exhibition and events programme at Hart Shoreditch.

During the 2024 edition of London Design Festival, 2LG Studio took over Hart Shoreditch with an immersive exhibition, SPECTRUM, using the hotel’s spaces to bring an inclusive exploration of colour to life. Imaginative and sensory, the installation explored human and personal connections to colour, evoking memories and inviting conversation around the boundaries and freedom of colour. Spread across the hotel’s public spaces, each part of the installation enlivened the senses through video projection, 3D printing, bespoke upholstery, evocative scent curation, and a rich soundscape. To bring the SPECTRUM concept to life, 2LG worked with a number of collaborators, including composer, Quentin LaChapele, digital artist Lucy Hardcastle, 3D print pioneers, Sheyn and Kirkby Design, utilising their new eco textiles and vegan leathers.

Encouraging full immersion into SPECTRUM, an exciting programme of events provided visitors with a deeper insight and engagement with the work. Alongside workshops on poetry and meditation, SPACE magazine’s deputy editor, Jess Miles, moderated the panel discussion ‘Emotional Connections to Colour’ which saw 2LG’s Jordan Cluroe and Russell Whitehead joined by Lina, the General Manager at Hart Shoreditch, Annette Cmela from Hidden Disabilities Sunflower, and Rachael Hymas, Partnership Manager at London Design Festival. The discussion explored the profound emotional connections to colour and how the installation fosters a sense of inclusivity, bringing together diverse perspectives to create a truly immersive experience.

Post London Design Festival, SPACE caught up with 2LG Studio to discuss the creative journey behind the SPECTRUM installation, which marked 10 years of creating together.

Can you tell us about your inspiration behind SPECTRUM?
It’s a deep dive into our emotional connections to colour, through design. This year we are celebrating 10 years of designing together as a duo and we wanted to look into why we have been drawn to certain colours over and over. What they mean to us. This was also a way of us communicating a wider ethos about inclusivity and openness, using the universal language of colour to invite people to join us on the journey. We took time to explore the surroundings outside the hotel to give a sense of place too. There is so much colour in the urban setting outside the hotel so we wanted to bring that inside and explore that too. It’s multi layered.

Talk us through the process and how it all came together
We began by looking at the 2LG palette of 7 colours that we keep coming back to, then we took lots of photos of the surrounding area in Shoreditch and made some connections. Next, we shared some personal stories about connections to specific colours, like peach, with each other and started to piece together a narrative journey about human connections, healing, and joy. We pinned each of these moments of the narrative onto designs we had made over the past ten years to revisit and reimagine past pieces that have been significant in our own journey as designers. Next, we reached out to fabricators, artists and makers to draw in our network of creatives and make each piece in a new materiality or colour.

How does SPECTRUM embody 10 years of 2LG Studio?
In a literal sense, it is a showcase of designs we have made over the past ten years and of the colour palette we’ve developed. A celebration of our design work by reimagining pieces with a new found perspective, from materials of the future, like PLA filament and vegan leather. But in a wider sense, a more emotional sense, it’s a representation of the pain and healing we’ve experienced and the newfound confidence and joy that has come with time. We now know why we do what we do more than ever and we want to be a voice for good in the world. An inclusive voice that reaches out and offers a space for different human experiences and emotions.

Why does Hart Shoreditch make the perfect site for your installation during LDF, rather than a stand-alone space or gallery?
Hart Shoreditch is founded on craft heritage and it’s also a space that welcomes many different people from around the world on a daily basis. This is the perfect space to explore human narratives and emotional connections to colour. It’s about creating conversations and inviting people in to experience something emotive rather than putting design on a pedestal.

Could you discuss the collaborations within SPECTRUM, and how they have brought the project to life.
Collaboration has been a big part of our design journey as we started out our professional careers as actors and that’s a very collaborative job. We have worked here with a group of makers and artists who bring a different skill set than ours and the combined work brings something new to both our and their work. Whether that’s a new materiality in the case of the 3D printed pieces with Fab.pub or a different discipline like the music we made with Quentin LaChapele. It builds a rich, layered experience.

How does the SPECTRUM events program invite new ways of connection with the installation?
The narrative building workshop and breathing/meditation sessions encouraged the participants to engage with the work and the space in a fully immersive way, placing themselves at the heart of the journey. It’s so fulfilling to hear stories about powerful colour memories shared in group workshops and to collectively meditate in the immersive space. We live in a fast paced world and these sessions required each of us to slow down, take time and focus on something out of our normal experience. It’s a rare opportunity and it yielded some beautiful moments form everyone involved.

How do you use colour in your work (and the installation) to break down barriers and foster inclusivity?
Colour is a wonderful conversation starter and a universal language for people of all abilities and cultural perspectives. By showing a wide spectrum of shades and materials we hope that each visitor can find something of themselves and for themselves within it.

In SPECTRUM we see both of your personal, emotional connections to colour. How do you approach the use of colour for client projects?
We begin with an immediate 3 colour take on each client that we share with eachother after our initial meetings. This is a great way to get a first instinct across and this way we can negotiate a stron colour narrative for each client that builds the foundation for the details and layers to come.

Where do neutrals such as grey, or beige sit on your spectrum?
Everyone has their own spectrum and not all of them involve deep hues or neons or pastels. Some are drawn instinctively to neutrals. Everything has its place as long as it evokes emotion for you. And neutrals play a strong role in all of our work as a foil or backdrop to the powerful colour moments. Even the film we made with Lucy Hardcastle has moments of white or beige to give counterpoint to the colours.

How did you balance and respect each other’s experiences and perspectives on such a personal project?
We have spent years finding and honing this balance. Sometimes one or other of us feels passionate about a specific element and we have learned to allow this ebb and flow. It’s been a powerful part of our working relationship to not compromise but rather to allow eachother to fully explore personal boundaries perspectives and stories within our work. But that has come with time and effort.

What’s next for 2LG Studio?
We are loving working in a multi-disciplinary way, giving us freedom to apply our creativity across art, design, interiors and even poetry and music now. It feels that this cross over has become more accepted over the past couple of years and we welcome that freedom in our expression. You can expect more colour, more product launches and more full interiors from us. We’d love to design a hotel next. It would be so exciting to bring our learnings from the past 10 years and not least from Spectrum, into play in a hotel space. Giving the opportunity to create communal spaces and private spaces within our colour world.