Dear Mr. Smith,
I am a student of the Journalism school at the Cardiff University. As a part of an assignment, I am doing a story on the repainting of the Splott bridge. I'd request you to answer a few questions for the story:
1. What's the idea behind the design?
2. Which of the two are your favourite?
3. How do you think the repainting of the bridge will affect the residents of Adamsdown and Splott?
I's be grateful if you could answer these questions as they are indispensable for the story.
Thanking You,
Yours Sincerely,
Shruti Tripathi
Dear Shruti,
Thank you for your email. Here are responses to your questions:
1. The idea behind the bridge designs is to create a dynamic colour composition using shapes and forms gathered from the buildings, streets and places around the neighbourhood of Splott. The designs and colour schemes are named after streets in the vicinity of the bridge. The shapes came from features of buildings and small details that are abstracted and altered in scale. For example, a small pipe can become a large tube form.
On the colour choice, some came from pure observation. For example the golden ochre (in both designs) came from the victorian decorative tiles in many of the doorways around splott and the naples yellow from the horizontal brick work of the end of terraces (the bands in habershon also came from this). The other brickwork including a photo from the willows school of a pub end wall and rusty pipes at the steelworks informed the reds, and there is a fair amount of painted blue around the steelworks... But above all, of course, final colour was chosen for interaction, contrast and design needs.
2. I would have to go with Constellation as a personal favourite as it is the most dramatic of the two and the bright yellow perhaps will lift the south west side of the bridge that does not get so much sun.
3. I hope it will brighten that end of Splott Road for everyone that walks, drives and passes by into and out of Splott and Adamsdown.
