Working on an international project, such as the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, we travel for various meetings with our client and with our consultants. During a recent visit to our engineer’s office in London for a series of coordination sessions we had an opportunity to do some exploring. We made our way to the Tower of London where we knew an installation titled Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red was underway. The installation was comprised of ceramic poppies created by artist Paul Cummings and staged by designer Tom Piper. Symbols of remembrance that stem from the trench warfare in the poppy fields of Belgium during World War I, poppies have become an emblem of the fallen soldier. Marking the centenary of the First World War, the flowers flood the moat around the tower with red. They appear to pour from a window at the perimeter wall and flow around the structure like a river. Each of the 888,246 poppies represents a British fatality. A poetic reminder to our generation what devastating consequences war brings.
The 2025 OpenLAB Boston studio work will be exhibited at Virginia Tech Monday, March 2nd through Wednesday, March 4th.
Please join us for the following events on Monday, March 2nd:
11:00am - Lecture with Parke MacDowell
1:00pm Lobby talk with Kevin Sullivan
This year’s studio identifies seven sites along the frayed edges of Boston’s Greenway. The Greenway is a one-mile-long linear park running through the heart of the city, reconnecting downtown Boston with its waterfront. Many of the parcels along its edges remain undeveloped and present mute, blank facades to the public realm. Addressing and repairing these edges through acts of infilling, layering, grafting, framing, and placemaking is the core focus of the studio—SUTURE.