Two Sheffield appointments to be revealed

This week two large-scale design projects in Sheffield, until now shrouded in uncertainty, are on the verge of resolution.

The 15m National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield will shortly appoint a consultancy to work on identity, graphics and signage for the centre, due to open early next year. Interiors are being created by project architect Branson Coates.

The centre’s marketing director Sharon McKoy has conducted a five-way unpaid pitch and will announce the successful consultancy in the coming weeks. She declines to reveal the contenders’ identities.

The appointment will follow a long-running and widely criticised selection procedure.

An initial shortlist of 26 consultancies was drawn up last April. Eleven groups later dropped out because some missed the initial deadline and others were not prepared to participate in such a big pitch (DW 3 May 1997).

Meanwhile, as Design Week went to press, the newly created 68m United Kingdom Sports Institute was in meetings to establish its exact corporate structure.

“We are on the verge of agreeing a memorandum of understanding and we will then be able to address the issue of our identity. At the moment we have no product and so we cannot get to work on our logo,” says an institute spokeswoman.

A decision is expected to be reached in the next week.