Anatomy of Time

Artist Clare Twomey has created a new public artwork that transforms the Bond Street West Elizabeth Line station. The sculptural façade, commissioned by Grosvenor, seems to emerge from the ground and climb the southwestern corner of Grosvenor’s 65 Davies Street development.

Anatomy of Time is based on Mayfair’s local ancient plants and water ways. This vast, yet gentle composition of the local botanical narratives indented into the façade of the building create an artwork that is embedded into the building and flows out of its terracotta façade. The placement of the leaves that cut through the building piers flow and lead our gaze towards the sky and the surrounding trees. Tracing the path of the River Tyburn, and carved into the surface of the building, the leaf shapes sustain a relationship with the architecture and local area. The leaf patterns were inspired by William Curtis’s Flora Londinensis, a pioneering study of urban nature that recorded 430 flowering species within a 10-mile radius of London.

The use of terracotta, a brownish-red clay commonly used as an ornamental building material and in modelling, reflects the cultural connections and historic uses of the material within the surrounding Mayfair area. NBK worked with the design team to manufacture the bespoke tiles that create the leaf patterns. The artwork considers – from its materiality, the manufacturing processes and through the celebration of botanical heritage of Mayfair – all aspects of a sustainable future.

The 65 Davies Street office development, located above the new Bond Street Elizabeth Line station adds to the ongoing transformation of Mayfair and the West End, with Grosvenor working with partners to invest £1.3 billion across Mayfair and Belgravia over the next 10 years, with 14 major projects and 1 million sq. ft. of redevelopment already underway. 65 Davies has been designed by PLP Architects, with Multiplex managing the construction.

Futurecity was commissioned in 2021 to develop a public art strategy for the activation of the building façade with a large scale public artwork. From this strategy, Clare Twomey was selected by a panel from a group of three shortlisted artists through a commission process managed by Futurecity.