KITSON HOUSE
Kitson House was the residence of the Victorian engineer James Kitson, a figure central to British locomotion. Decades of municipal use had obscured its architectural character. Industruct's brief, led by Emma Bennett of Embe Creative Studio, was to restore the building and reintroduce it as a contemporary headquarters.
Atrium was commissioned to develop the original work that would sit at the centre of the restored building, a programme of paintings and mixed-media pieces conceived to give Kitson House its contemporary voice.
APPROACH
The programme was developed across three registers: the building's history, Industruct's identity, and Atrium's own studio language.
The historical works draw from Kitson House itself. In the lower-floor bathroom, a wall of typographic and figurative pieces references James Kitson's locomotion legacy. In the principal rooms, two large rug-portraits reinterpret the king-and-queen gargoyles set into the building's stone façade — brought from the exterior into the interior as guardian figures.
The works responding to Industruct read as quieter portraits of the company. Above the reception fireplace, an abstracted aerial view of one of Industruct's largest commercial developments meets visitors as they arrive. A further group of works in the executive offices was developed as direct expressions of Atrium's studio language, independent of the building or its restoration scheme.
