Tonkin Liu Architects light up burnley

Seven years on from creating the singing ringing tree, multi-award winning architects tonkin liu have returned to burnley to create a new piece of art titled - Rain Bow Gate.

Using a technique, called shell lace structure, that has been pioneered over the past year by a team of architects at Tonkin Liu in collaboration with Ed Clark at Arup. shell lace structure is inspired by nature. Sea shells gain strength from optimised curvilinear geometry, locking in stiffness with corrugation. Lightness is achieved through perforation, creating highly-efficient and responsive structures with minimum weight and wastage.

Rain in burnley was pivotal to its industrial past, and it was the first place in the uk to record its rainfall. The bow of a rainbow is the most simple and dynamic natural geometry, structurally efficient due to its curvature. Three gateways welcome people from three directions, where three routes converge in front of a college, creating a gathering place. The three perforated arches fuse to form a covered space that responds to the ever-changing weather. Constructed from flat, laser-cut, perforate 3mm steel sheets, with 133 prism inserts in the perforations that create dappled rainbow coloured, ever-changing light. at night, light shines through the prism to cast rainbow coloured light onto the mist. In the spirit of burnley’s excellence in digital design, analysis, and fabrication, rain bow gate becomes a demonstration project for this new structural technique.