Posted November 16, 2016

City Sign, colloquially known as Hajek Plaza (or as the artist himself referred, Adelaide Urban Iconography), is a significant art piece created by artist Otto Hajek in 1973–77, it was designed to be a form of artificial garden used as a public space in conjunction with the Festival Centre.

The final space departed from his original vision, replacing coloured tiles with painted concrete and garden beds and water features significantly reduced. As such, the space never won over the public and decades of neglect, plus a poor intervention in the early 2000s that separated it from the Festival Centre, meant it became even more isolated and forgotten (except for a brief appearance as the setting of the Festival venue Barrio).

I took these images over the two days before preliminary works began to disassemble the artwork in preparation for a complete redevelopment of the area. Despite it’s polarising nature, I feel it to be an important part of Adelaide’s identity and a symbol of both an optimism and embrace of the arts in the 70s as well as an an all too common example of a compromised vision.

• Full Album

Posted November 16, 2016

With it’s large scale, (faded) bright colours, and prominent structures of varying scale; City Sign became a welcome playground to explore for Naoto while I was taking photos.

It brings to mind Britain’s post-war brutalist playgrounds (and Assemble’s 2015 foam homage), which were interesting spaces for play and exploration without having typical ‘for kids’ visual cues.

Whilst many an adult may regard the space as barren and unattractive, a child through fresh eyes can perceive the space in an entirely different way.

• Full Album

Posted April 1, 2016

It’s our birthday, and we’ll launch a new website if we want to.

sector7g is 17 years old today, so we’ve launched our new site with work spanning the entire history of the studio, along with Not Lost — a new sister site of design essays — ready for your weekend browsing.