Ping Pong Light Box

A little over two years ago I was commissioned to work on designs for the new Ping Pong restaurant, next to Wembley Stadium, North London. For anyone that doesn't know much about Ping Pong, they're an international restaurant chain that specialise in Dim sum. For this project I worked in conjunction with Andy Martin Architects. 

Part of the brief involved me creating a 1930's Shanghai influenced mural for one of the internal walls, and hand painted wall panels for the ladies and gents toilets (that's English for Restrooms). 

However, the piece that I most enjoyed working on during the project was a massive, 20 metre-long light box designed to hang from the ceiling, in the centre of the restaurant. For this I came up with a predominantly aquatic themed design, incorporating drawings of jellyfish, octopuses, fish, seaweed, and weird forms, morphing together. 

 

Unfortunately, as is often the way with these sort of things, the final dimensions of the light box ended up being very different from the ones that I was originally given to work from. As a result, the flow of the eventual design on the light box ended up being a bit of a compromise – cobbling together smaller elements of my proposed design. Because of the tight build schedule on site, and delays with materials from the building suppliers, I didn't get to actually see the light box being installed, or even its eventual colour scheme. In fact, it's only because I recently came across this photo of it online, that I actually got to see it at all.

To give a rough idea of what I was thinking, when I was first handed the brief, I've included three of my early working drawings for some of the panels that make up the light box.