Park Town was a Degree Show exhibition at Central Saint Martins College of Arts & Design. The course MA Creative Practice for Narrative Environments deals with spatial interventions and communications, occurring largely in the public space and the show needed to reflect this focus while allowing the wide range and media of student work room to express itself.
The unused car park area at the centre of the college building was revitalized into a town square, dressed in astro-turf and lined with garden sheds, completed with park benches, trees, shops and even a pub, creating a natural oasis for new ideas right at the heart of central London.
Each garden shed housed the projects of two students and inherited the function of their work. In this way, audiovisual work was housed in the Cinema, the Town Hall displayed radical public design schemes and the Launderette sheltered grassroots community projects.
The design of the signage for Park Town followed a bold and colourful approach; complemented with rich textures such as orientated strand board and glossy florescent vinyl it contrasted and balanced the largely green space. The vibrant design scheme and texture pallet was continued in the exhibition catalogue and additional exhibition structures. The catalogue benefited from a traditional book binding method purposefully left unfinished exposing the glue and thread on the spine.
The normally deserted space became a meeting point and connecting hub that successfully took on many of the functions and characteristics of the public space it parodied – the town square, with visitors often taking ownership of the space and even bringing picnic blankets and walking around barefoot in the exhibition area.