An image of Sheikh Zayed, made up of 30,000 reflective discs, has been unveiled by an architecture and design studio from London recently. The large scale installation spans an area of 15 meters. The Portrait is the work of Giles Miller Studio. Giles Miller is known for using materials and lights as well as technology and handmade compositions in his projects.
The portrait, which is located in the DoubleTree by Hilton Dubai M Square Hotel & Residences, exemplifies this method, as the metallic discs are carefully fixed onto a backing at different angles in order to control how the light reflects on the surface. “The angle variation creates tonal differences in the image, and we use that effect to control and illustrate the image in question,” explains Giles Miller, the studio’s founder.
Miller, who studied at London’s Royal College of Art, launched his studio in 2010, building it up after working on a commission for the Stella McCartney brand. Over the years, the studio has experimented with material and scale, producing site-specific designs and sculptural pieces.
“Despite the evolution of the studio and our work, the concept of manipulating material to control reflection has been a constant in our methodology, and we still maintain the same creative approach across projects of hugely varying scales, from jewellery to murals, and from sculpture to architecture,” Miller says.
Miller says that for creating this portrait his team studied the way the light would reflect within the space and how visitors would move around the work. The portrait took a team of eight members who worked for three weeks to complete it. The focus of the piece is not simply how the discs have been assembled, but the dimensions of colour that reveal themselves depending on the viewer’s perspective.
“By using reflection as a medium, there is inherent variation in the artwork depending on the surrounding light levels, the position of the viewer relative to the piece, and even the time of day or night it is viewed,” Miller says.