The Flow
Platinan office building, Gothenburg, Sweden
The Flow is our first artwork in size XL. It’s a conceptual shell-art installation in an immense office building in Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast. In the generous social lounge area on the 12th floor, a farsighted interior designer at Kanozi Arkitekter had left a 10-square-meter, 5-centimeter-deep niche in a rough concrete wall.
A sense of the room
The plan was to expose a visual connection between the sustainable interior concept and the salty waters of the North Sea. Kanozi thought shells would do the job; we couldn’t agree more. Our first priority was an on-site visit. To get a sense of the room, see the light move along the wall and understand the angles people would approach it from was crucial.
Room for changes
What we saw settled our creative approach. Plans to pre-produce panels in the studio were abandoned; working on-site makes the process more controllable. Being in the space allows for a better overview; mistakes can be fixed in the moment, leaving room for creative changes as we go along.
Swedish blue mussels
A hand-drawn conceptual sketch explained our initial idea: shells in sections rolling like waves across the wall, round mirrors rising up through the surging pattern like bubbles in water. The eleven mirrors invite you to go closer and look at the details of the artwork. Swedish blue mussels were on the client’s wishlist. And in our plan too. But we wanted to add something: prickly cockles for contrast and abalone shells for a shimmering effect. Proposal accepted! We love when clients allow themselves to imagine our vision and trust our intentions, just from a simple drawing and a few explanatory words. Open-minded collaborations tend to end up with a successful result.
No detailed plan
The time it took before we were allowed onto the building site, we used to collect, sort and clean a large number of mussel shells from our local beaches. For this project, the natural shape of the shells and our desire to follow where the shells wanted to go, guided the directions of the flowing pattern.
Thumbs up!
The Flow took us ten long days to finish. Putting up a shell artwork in an open area means you get an audience. The floor was still a building site, and people working in the building came to check how things were developing. The rumor about two shell men creating something spectacular on the 12th floor had spread. Thumbs were up! A year later we returned to check on the shells. All good, and reports said The Flow was much appreciated by visitors. It still is. We’ve checked.
““The shape of the shells determines the flowing pattern. We decided not to do any detailed sketches for this piece. Instead, we chose to follow the shapes of nature, not bend them. This proved to be a liberating way to approach the work process.””
Mikael Hjärtsjö, Shellman Scandinavia
