tonkin liu: rainbow gate, england

tonkin liu has created a unifying pavilion in the form of ‘rainbow gate’ for a river-bordered market town in england. a beneficiary of the industrial revolution, the newly turned mill town of burnley was the first to record its rainfall, since rain filled the rivers that powered the mills. with this conceptual underpinning, the designers have used the architectural object to pay homage to the area’s historical economy and usher in its post-industrial occupation of precision engineering.

at night the aperture relationship is reversed
image © tonkin liu (also main image)| all images courtesy of tonkin liu / small projects

in front of the college of burnley, at a site where three routes converge, perforated steel curves bow over the nexus of the circulation. while the sound of rain reverberates off the metal and thereafter, when water runs down the pavilion’s curved grooves, prisms inserted into the minute apertures capture sunlight and array a rainbow spectrum onto the ground.

view of the perforations and prisms
image © tonkin liu

aside from the poetry of polychrome patches of light, the architects, alongside the engineers at arup, have also pioneered a structural system called ‘shell lace’ that draws from nature to optimize flat sheets to become light-weight self-supporting forms. combining both digital fabrication and modeling with the strengthening, layered geometry of sea shells, the forms combine curve and corrugation for strength while removing material from non-loadbearing planes. the result is a highly efficient structure with a dynamic skin.

view of the prisms and the rainbow light they yield
image © tonkin liu