{"id":120743,"date":"2025-05-21T20:50:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T20:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/120743\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T20:50:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T20:50:14","slug":"alex-chinnecks-brick-facade-sculpture-sits-down-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/120743\/","title":{"rendered":"alex chinneck\u2019s brick facade sculpture sits down in london"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week at the knees by Alex Chinneck shows up in london<\/b><\/p>\n

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At the Clerkenwell Design Week 2025, Alex Chinneck\u2019s<\/b><\/a> monumental brick<\/b><\/a> facade sculpture<\/b><\/a> slides and sits down in London\u2019s Charterhouse Square. Named \u2018A week at the knees,\u2019 the public art<\/b><\/a>, on view at the event between May 20th and 22nd, looks like it has gotten weary, so it slides down onto the grass to take a break. It raises its knees, creating an arch over the gravel path and allowing the visitors to pass through it like a temporary underpass. At first glance, the monumental brick facade<\/b><\/a> sculpture seems made of lightweight materials. That is, until Alex Chinneck tells visitors the sculpture comes to life using real bricks, 7,000 in total.<\/p>\n

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Under the red bricks lies 4.6 tons of reused steel, salvaged from the demolition of the former American Embassy in London and provided by Cleveland Steel. The step has allowed the artist to reduce the artwork\u2019s footprint by around 9.3 tons of carbon emissions. The 7,000 bricks are a combination of First Quality Multi Bricks and Floren Albion bricks, provided by the Michelmersh Group and precision cut by FabSpeed. There are seven recycled steel windows with four bending frames, courtesy of Crittal Windows, alongside one bending door and drainpipe. Visitors can see the artwork for free from today until the end of June 2025 at Charterhouse Square, London.<\/p>\n

\"alex
all images courtesy of Alex Chinneck | photos by Charles Emerson<\/a><\/p>\n

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monumental brick facade sculpture that has slid down<\/b><\/p>\n

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\u2018A week at the knees\u2019 is a freestanding monumental brick facade sculpture. At the present time, it stands at 5.5 meters tall and is 13.5 meters long. It\u2019s not the first time Alex Chinneck made his public art slide down. He did it in 2013 with the sliding house in Margate, which first brought him global attention. In this artwork, the facade seems to peel off from the house. In \u2018A week at the knees\u2019, a slope emerges, the knees of the sculpture, depicting a local or tourist who\u2019s resting in the garden during summertime. It\u2019s more physical, more human, more alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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While it\u2019s almost impossible not to see the monumental brick facade sculpture, there\u2019s still a chance some might think a building\u2019s walls have peeled off if they\u2019re looking at it. That\u2019s because the public art, when viewed from afar, mimics the Georgian architecture that surrounds it, making the temporary sculpture seemingly part of the rows of houses. The artist<\/b><\/a> has been doing his practice for a long time. He has completed close to twenty public artworks already. He has made buildings that melt, hover, bend, and unzip, and even tied street furniture in knots. Safe to say that he\u2019s just getting started. Even more follows after the brick facade sculpture at Clerkenwell Design Week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"alex
Alex Chinneck\u2019s monumental brick facade sculpture slides and sits down in London\u2019s Charterhouse Square<\/p>\n

\"alex
named \u2018A week at the knees,\u2019 the public art is on view between May 20th and 22nd, 2025<\/p>\n

\"alex
it has raised \u2018knees\u2019 to allow visitors to pass through it<\/p>\n

\"alex
the sculpture comes to life using real bricks, 7,000 in total<\/p>\n

\"alex
in detail, there are 4.6 tons of reused steel under the red bricks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A week at the knees by Alex Chinneck shows up in london \u00a0 At the Clerkenwell Design Week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[53864,16275,748,393,20185,4884,257,11168,11102,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-120743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-alex-chinneck","9":"tag-brick-architecture","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-facades","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-public-art","16":"tag-sculpture","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114547800516461381","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}