No. 1616 Fence
A 13m-high sculptural installation by Rana Begum and Webb Yates for London Festival of Architecture 2026, located outside Space House in central London. The work explores boundaries, borders, and belonging through a material that restricts physical access while remaining visually open.
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Artist x Engineer
Rana Begum x Webb Yates
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Fabricator
BLOQS Create
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Host
Space House
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Collaborators
HB Reavis, Albion Stone, Setworks
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Event
London Festival of Architecture
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Photography
Andy Stagg
Material choices
No. 1616 Fence is built from industrial, powder-coated mesh: a material that both closes off physical access while remaining entirely visually open. The inherent transparency and porosity of the mesh act as a form of structural mark-making, creating a gauze of colour that enters into dialogue with the surrounding site.
The work takes inspiration from prosaic structures such as pylons and radio masts. These minimal structures, designed with economy and clarity of purpose, often achieve a visual elegance that we sometimes don’t give attention to.
The choice of a loud, distinctive red cuts through the visual noise of the busy central London environment, acting as a warning sign that invites passersby to stop in their tracks. Against the white and grey mineral and concrete surfaces of Space House, the piece takes on a distinctly urban drama, with architectural pattern and sky as its backdrop.
From certain angles, the material overlaps into a dense, aggressive patch of solid red; from others, it slims down into a crisp line or almost entirely disappears, letting the surrounding architecture and sky take over.
The work builds on No.1387 Fence, a 2024 installation in Switzerland by Rana Begum and Webb Yates, created for Verbier 3-D Foundation. It represents the latest chapter in a long-standing, organic collaboration between Rana Begum and Steve Webb, defined by a playful back-and-forth between artistic vision and structural ingenuity. Both take inspiration from related issues of material, environment, and context, blurring the lines between the conventions of art and engineering.
I love pushing against the expectations of materials and working within structural constraints; collaborating with engineers really helps open up possibilities where you thought there were none.
– Rana Begum, artist
Circular engineering
The installation is completely modular and assembled from off-the-shelf commercial components. It sits on Portland Stone, a pale British oolitic limestone borrowed from stone fabricator and quarry operator Albion Stone, nodding to the history of nearby buildings and echoing the surrounding neutral tones. After the festival, the work can be easily disassembled, with all materials able to be reused.
We have designed a lot of pavilions, yet the idea of all this material ending up in a skip horrifies me. To change this, we design in a way where we can simply order standard components for delivery that morning and construct them on site, and once the festival is over, disassemble them to be used again.
– Steve Webb, engineer
Context
Located between Covent Garden and Holborn, Space House is a 267,000 sq ft workspace and retail campus that has recently undergone an extensive sustainability-led renovation. One of several London landmarks, including Centre Point and NatWest Tower, designed by the architect Richard Seifert with his long-term collaborator, engineer Willem Frischmann, the building is a synthesis of their disciplines, belonging simultaneously to the realms of structure and architecture.
With thanks to Zetteler and Kate MacGarry, London.
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