I developed the flowers from simple geometric and rounded forms, enlarging them so they could hold their own within the scale of the atrium and still read clearly from the upper floors. Their open tops become much more visible from above, while at ground level the stems and volumes feel more bodily and sculptural. I was interested in that shift between looking into a garden and physically moving among its forms.

As I worked with the rooms wrapped around the courtyard, I began imagining them almost as pockets or folds in an enormous dress, gathered around a woman at the centre. That became an important part of how I thought about the Diva: not simply as a figure placed in the atrium, but as a presence that could hold the surrounding architecture together while also feeling protective towards the people sleeping around her.

Her long raised arms were informed by the stage presence of Portuguese fado singer Amália Rodrigues. I was drawn to the way a simple gesture could give her such presence on stage. I extended that gesture through the Diva’s arms and placed lanterns at their ends, so light became part of the way her body reaches into the space.

The view from above also brought back childhood memories of watching Busby Berkeley musicals. His overhead compositions, where bodies turn into flowers, circles and changing patterns, stayed with me. Designing a work that would so often be seen from upper floors made me think again about how a group of sculptural forms could become one larger composition when viewed from above.

Light was part of the sculptures from the first sketches. I worked with lighting designer Edward Linacre and DMX programmer Joshua Batty to develop a repertoire of sequences across the Diva and the flowers. Colour, brightness and timing keep changing, so I think of the lighting almost as visual music. Different parts of the garden come forward and recede, and the flowers seem to bloom again and again in different combinations. At night, the mirrored glass picks up these changes and repeats them across the façades, making the garden appear to continue beyond the sculptures themselves.

The building also shaped how the sculptures were made. Aluminium and steel gave the larger forms the strength needed for a permanent installation, while foam allowed me to create larger volumes without unnecessary weight. Everything had to pass through a goods lift and narrow internal passages before being assembled in the atrium, so I developed the forms and their construction together. My architectural training was very present in this part of the process: scale, structure, weight, access and fabrication were not separate from the sculpture; they helped determine what the forms could become.