All works

The Electric Nemeton

Public art · Granary Square, London

An illuminated grove in Granary Square, drawing on forest gathering places and winter tree traditions. Modular pyramids of timber and coloured net stand on metal trunks, creating both a sculptural object and a place to walk beneath. Commissioned by King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership.

The Electric Nemeton reflected in rainwater in Granary Square

The Electric Nemeton

The canopy brings tree-like forms into an architectural structure. Its geometry and colour change with the light and the viewer’s position.

The coloured canopy in low sunlight

Colour in layers

Scaffold net, timber joists and galvanised steel remain visible. Overlapping translucent surfaces vary between solidity and transparency as people move around them.

Photograph © Jan Friedlein / AKT II

The Electric Nemeton among the buildings of Granary Square

A winter gathering place

The project offered a setting for outdoor social life during the pandemic. Its winter symbolism connects light in the darkness with hope for the return of shared public life.

Axonometric design drawing of the timber pyramids and metal trunks

An architecture of trees

Tree-like pyramids are held four metres above the ground. The elevated roof recalls the engineered station sheds nearby while keeping a forest-like character.

Plan drawing showing the arrangement of pyramidal canopy modules

A modular grove

The plan reveals the repeated structural bays beneath the varied canopy. Developed with AKTII for engineering, DHA Designs for lighting and Jamps Studio for fabrication.

For exhibitions, acquisitions and commissions: [email protected].

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Selected works

50 works in 4 files. More to come.

About Sam Jacob

Sam Jacob makes work that explores the strange lives of familiar things. His work draws on the images, objects and fragments of history through which we construct ideas of nature, culture and ourselves.

Across drawings, objects, installations and curatorial projects, he examines how architecture and material things embody social and cultural ideas, how ‘fictions’ become ‘real’, how ideas become things, and how things become ideas.

Collage, copying and processes of reconstruction are central to this practice, which also moves between digital processes and physical materiality. These transformations and translations bring both humour and unease to questions of memory, value and meaning.

Solo exhibitions include Against Nature (2023) and Empire of Ice Cream (2019) at Betts Project, London, and Disappear Here at the RIBA Architecture Gallery (2018). His work has also been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the V&A, MAK Vienna, the National Museum in Oslo, the Graham Foundation in Chicago and Secession, Vienna, and at Manifesta and the Venice and Chicago architecture biennials.

Curatorial projects include A Clockwork Jerusalem, co-curated with Wouter Vanstiphout for the British Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale; The Lie of the Land at MK Gallery; and Pattern as Politics, with Priya Khanchandani, at the 2019 Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Jacob is a columnist for ArtReview, writes Strangeharvest, and is the author of Make It Real: Architecture as Enactment. He is Professor and Dean of the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Die Angewandte), and directs Sam Jacob Studio, a collaborative architecture and design practice.

For exhibitions, gallery enquiries, acquisitions and commissions, contact [email protected].