Art Commissions and Interventions - FACT

At the start of the development of the FACT Centre there was a strong emphasis on maintaining a collaborative design process between FACT and the design team. It was anticipated that this process would result in a building that would reflect the aspirations of FACT through images, sounds and texts as well as the forms, materials and palettes of the building. This approach initially led to the creation of a Lead Artist role for the project whose main task was to work with the architect, Austin-Smith:Lord, to develop a number of features for the building.

The subsequent approach was based on the theme of the self-reflexive building – a building providing features that reflect its life and functions back to its inhabitants. Many of the resultant features have been collaborations that are completely intrinsic to the building design – most notably the external building skin, the orientation wall and many of the internal finishes - but others are external commissions, allowing other artists to respond to the theme through their own distinctive approaches.

In addition, a further project – Sensibilia – was supported through the RSA Art for Architecture scheme and aimed to explore the issues raised when presenting media artworks to those with some form of sensory impairment. Part of the project report is contained in this website.

A documentation project for the construction process has also been undertaken jointly by Jitender Shambi and Clive Gillman. The results of this are contained in a paper publication ‘CONSTRUCT’ available from FACT .

FACT is the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology.

The FACT building project is a national centre in Liverpool for the presentation and production of film, art and creative technology.

http://www.fact.co.uk