The Vancouver designer is building a 60-foot cascading display that’s inspired by climate change.

Lighting designer Matthew McCormick will be showcasing his latest work at the London Design Festival in the V&A museum.

The 60-foot tall installation, Falling Sky, features countless deconstructed, frost-like formations that will be suspended over the main staircase in the museum. The asymmetrical fragments are seemingly frozen in time—and are intended to offer observers a means to take pause and reflect on the effects of planetary change through global warming.

Made from reflective aluminum and formed into sporadic clusters, the design emulates the feathery frost deposits that can accumulate during humid weather conditions on a mountain, thus creating a weak layer in a snowpack that is notorious for avalanche. “Over the last decade or two, I’ve watched how climate change has impacted our environment especially with regards to our winter season,” says the Western Living Industrial Designer of the Year in 2016. “I moved to Vancouver to experience the favourable snow conditions we typically see on our local mountains. However in recent years, our weather patterns have drastically changed prompting a fluctuation in precipitation both on and off the mountains. Worse yet, we’ve seen more instability in the snow pack causing slopes to be more susceptible to avalanche—another natural phenomena that has affected me personally.”

“We couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the V&A Museum through the London Design Festival, being one of the most culturally relevant design institutions in the world,” says McCormick, “especially with the theme of the project hitting so close to home. Despite your thoughts on climate change, the narrative of the installation seeks to provoke an emotional response and conversation about the ever-present dangers of what looms above us—whether we choose to accept it, or not.”

Falling Sky will be on display from September 14 to 21, 2019, at the V&A for the London Design Festival.

Anicka Quin

Anicka Quin

Anicka Quin is the editor-in-chief of Western Living magazine and the VP of Content for Canada Wide Media. If you've got a home design you'd like to share with Western Living, drop her a line at [email protected]