Ormiston Town Centre – design is in our blood

With little time to spare before a new town centre opening and a call with a challenge: could we fabricate aluminium clouds – powder coat in differing shades of white – and wire suspend with a ribbon of light that would weave its way 100 metres through the new food court.

Design is in our blood. Manufacturing is what we do every day. The answer to Ormiston Town Centre was “YES”.

The design agency had provided a rendering of the space with no input to materials, fixing or structure. We worked to take the render through to manufacturing concepts using different solutions.

One, stretched fabric clouds on CHS tube frames, ended up not being viable with the fire sprinkler systems. It became clear we needed fire engineers’ clearance and together we worked  through a dozen sheet metal and fabric options, quickly making up samples of each.

We landed on an aluminium security profile, got the tick from the fire engineers, and  started fabrication. We built 16 massive cloud shapes that then required us to rebuild the powder coat oven to fit them.

Next, we formed a 100 metre long rolled aluminium channel in sections of five metres and powder coated them to match. This was for housing the RGBW LED light track lighting.

We plotted the entire 100m of track light on to pounce paper and rolled the channel to suit the necessary numbering, tack welding jointers and wire fixing stays. This plot then became the installation master plan. We laid the pounce paper out along the ground and all fixing points lasered up to the roof in sections. It took three installers three nights just to hang the wires precisely.

Job done – happy town centre owners, designers, and a proud Capitol Signs team.