PLANT SCIENCE
Forster & Heighes

Alan Read, the director of Performance Foundation, Kings College, invited Ewan Forster and Christopher Heighes to investigate the myriad buildings and spaces of the University. Forster & Heighes are an intriguing and engaging duo, who together create – through a painstaking, determined process of enquiry – highly revealing and incisive performative responses to architectural sites, very often focusing on the overlooked or neglected areas and histories of the buildings, spaces and archives. SecMoCo were asked to design the logotype and publication to accompany the installation within the university exhibition rooms, entitled Plant Science: the disposal of 68 Half Moon Lane. This documented the ‘de-commissioning’ of one of the colleges’ sites in West London, taking the form, and using the language of, auction catalogues.

First edition published by Performance Foundation, London, UK; 24pp, 230 x 165mm; full colour throughout

Context from the Forster and Heighes website: ‘Plant Science is a meditation on the apparatus of study and learning; an exploration of the performative qualities of the lab bench and workstation as sites of intense scrutiny and discovery and devices for pedagogical exchange and experiment. Glasshouse, green-board, test bench, workstation, fume cupboard, propagation bed, specimen cabinet and fire door – a building distilled to its essential elements, clarified, separated and reconstituted in the neoclassical environment of Somerset House’.