The Library of Four Winds was a kinetic public art installation located within Castle Howard’s Gardens in Yorkshire.
Designed by Es Devlin, in honour of the National Year of Reading and in celebration of Castle Howard’s architect Sir John Vanbrugh in his tercentenary year, the heart of this art installation featured a sculpture made using hundreds of books. The sculpture revolved as prose was projected onto its surface for visitors to read and contemplate, encouraging them to sit and reflect in and around the temple.
The Temple of the Four Winds is a Grade I Listed building. This project required careful pre-planning to assess accessibility into the temple and to ensure it would be protected throughout the installation.
At its centre, a 3.5-metre-tall double-sided oval bookcase presented over a thousand books, those at the outer edge cut to shape to fit within the curve of the bookcase, the books glued into place to secure the artwork.
The bookcase turned at 1 revolution per minute, sat upon a 3.4 metre revolve encased in a square base clad with 6mm mirrored glass. Driven by a slew ring, with a slip ring at the centre for power, our automation team made a bespoke drive to fit inside the casing, adding PSN tracking data to allow the projector to follow the movement of the bookcase.
Outside, we installed four eight-metre-long concentric tables where visitors could sit and read. The tables were set into a pathway surrounding the temple and featured integrated LED lighting to the table edge.
We manufactured each of these tables in three sections; fabricating the steel frame in our metal shop, cladding them in layers of timber in our woodshop, and finished with two coatings of glass resin, and polyurethane for weather protection.
With the installation located in a public environment, we pre-set safety parameters in the drive and created a start-up and close-off programme for Castle Howard’s volunteers to operate the revolve each day.
