New Sydney City policy sees hoardings turned into artworks

The City of Sydney in Australia has developed a Hoardings Policy that aims to turn building hoardings into public art spaces.

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Designs by Toko

The City has commissioned two Sydney design studios – Toko and Holt – to create a series of flexible artworks that can be used by building contractors on hoardings around the city.

A spokesman for the City says “[We wanted to] manage street-facing hoardings that screen and protect the public from building developments. This presented an opportunity to reinterpret hoarding spaces as public artworks.”

Both Holt and Toko were commissioned to create “colourful” designs that could be applied to the hoardings. The consultancies created flexible grid-based works that can be used in a variety of ways.

The City spokesman says: “This enables them to be placed end to end on any hoarding regardless of type, shape or size, and allows for any number of different design combinations.”

Toko
Designs by Toko

Holt says its designs are inspired by the “Concrete Art” abstractionist movement, introduced by Theo van Doesburg in his “Manifesto of Concrete Art” in 1930.

The consultancy created a series of eight compositions incorporating geometric elements and simple flat colour.

Holt
Holt designs in situ

Toko’s designs, meanwhile, use electric blue and purple colours in a variety of lines to create an optical illusion-style effect.

The City of Sydney says all the design will be available to download, so that building contractors can use them on hoardings across the city.

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