Formed from fragments of language and light, 20 illuminated light boxes at Sheffield Hallam University’s Hallam Green have created a poetic public installation – one that supports movement through the space while giving voice to student creativity and the city beyond.
By Helen Wright
Hallam Green is a new public space at the heart of Sheffield Hallam University’s City Campus. Designed as a place to pause and pass through, it brings together planting, trees and generous seating to support everyday use by students, staff and the wider city.
It is now also home to a permanent public art installation: 20 illuminated light boxes that showcase student work while bringing contemporary art into the public realm.
Importantly, the artistic design of the boxes themselves emerged from a student design competition, making the project as much about process and participation as it is about the final outcome.
The design team’s aspiration was to redefine public realm on private land, creating a space that is open, inclusive, and embedded within the life of the university.
By deliberately blurring boundaries between institution and city, the design supports movement, informal gathering and everyday use space that can feel cavernous – almost like an external atrium – particularly after dark.
It is multi-level, intersected by public routes, and adjacent to the ‘Gold Route’, a key pedestrian corridor between the railway station into the city centre. The ambition was to create intrigue and draw people in: to soften the perceived scale of the space, improve legibility and ensure it felt welcoming without overwhelming.
From the outset, the lighting needed to be engrained in the place – spatially, functionally and conceptually – rather than applied as an afterthought. The light boxes emerged as an architectural opportunity – illuminated elements operating at human scale, structuring movement while also shaping the character of the space.
The key question became whether these elements could do more than simply express an idea – could they actively contribute to how the space worked after dark? The intention was to avoid the installations being perceived simply allowing the space to operate as both a thoroughfare and a destination.
Our long-standing work with Sheffield City Council on its Heart of the City Masterplan had already opened up conversations about embedding light and art within the public realm – not as applied elements, but as part of the spatial fabric.
At the same time, our work on Sheffield Hallam University’s new campus developments opened up wider conversations about how lighting can play a central role in establishing identity. How it can create a sense of place and shape how people experience and move through the campus after dark.
LIGHT ENGRAINED IN THE SPACE
Working closely with Sheffield Hallam University, the design team focused on how the space should feel and how it would be used. The physical context was critical. Hallam Green is defined by tall buildings on two sides, creating a as ‘art in a space’, or equally as lighting introduced for its own sake.
Instead, the aim was to strike a careful balance between functional illumination and expressive intervention, ensuring the two worked together rather than in isolation. To that end, the boxes provide the predominant lighting within Hallam Green, leading a layered approach which creates a warm, welcoming environment that supports safe and confident movement through the space after dark, while also encouraging people to linger.
STUDENT COMPETITION
Sheffield Hallam University has a strong history of public art, from traditional artworks and poetry right the way through to contemporary installations and street art; it is something the university is really passionate about and interested in promoting and driving.
Rather than commissioning an external artist, the university and design team identified an opportunity to place students at the centre of the process – resulting in the development of a design competition.
The competition was open to students studying interior architecture, fine art and graphic design courses. Participation was optional, but many of the students chose to develop their entries as part of their course modules.
The design team ran a full afternoon workshop with students to explain aspiration, the brief, the special context, and the technical requirements they needed to meet within the piece.
Equally important was the question of inspiration. From the outset, both the design team and the university agreed this was not a branding exercise. The ambition was to create something for the city – reflecting the academic setting while capturing the energy of students and young people – strengthening the relationship between the university and Sheffield.
A high number of entries were received, and it was clear the brief genuinely inspired the students. From a wide field of strong submissions, seven were shortlisted and invited to present their concepts at Arup’s Sheffield office.
POEM FROM GRAFITTI FRAGMENTS
The winning proposal came from student Jasmin Eleanor von Schreiber, whose concept ‘Written on the Wall’ was inspired by a poem she assembled from fragments of informal graffiti collected from across the city – overlooked marks and messages that form part of the city’s everyday visual language.
Translating that idea into a permanent illuminated installation took time. The competition, detailed technical development and fabrication process meant that installation only began in February last year.
Throughout, close collaboration with contractor Studiotech was essential to ensure the original intent was retained while considering issues of construction, durability and maintenance. The completed installation reveals itself gradually.
Together, the 20 boxes form a single poem, but their scale and legibility change as you move through the space. At the edges of Hallam Green, the letter-forms are large and abstract – perceived more as luminous pattern than readable text. As you move inward, the letters become smaller and legible.
The light boxes now bring a warm, gentle glow to Hallam Green – subtle, atmospheric and rooted in the visual poetry of Sheffield itself.
‘IT FEELS VERY SHEFFIELD’
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Every box is different, so everywhere you see something different. There is a moment of discovery when people get to the middle and the poem reveals itself from the individual fragments. They can then pause there at the heart of the space and read the poem in full. The fragments of text are bold, provocative and light-hearted in equal measure. It feels of the city, it feels very Sheffield.
The most significant lesson from the project was the importance of collaboration and shared intent – holding onto a collective ambition to balance beauty and function, even when the route to achieving it was not always clear.
The result is something genuinely unique and appropriate to its context: a lighting installation that is useful, poetic and unmistakably of its place.
Helen Wright MSLL is associate at Arup
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the June edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
Image: the Hallam Green light boxes. Photograph: Arup/David Barbour
