Artwork for the glazing inside UCLan’s new £60m Student Centre, designed by architects, Hawkins Brown.

The artwork is applied to glass doors, screens and windows in approximately 30 sites around the building. As well as bringing artwork into fabric of the building, it provides privacy and safety for students, staff and visitors, and information on the function the spaces are used for.

This design, All A Line Can Be, references Preston’s textile history and UCLan’s textile education, and builds on the existing use of ‘threads’ in the building design. It comprises linear designs based on the positions of the woven threads in different types of cloth, using these lines to form abstract compositions on the glass that play with the regularity and irregularity of the different lines, creating movement, rhythm and visual interest.

The lines in these designs represent concepts relating to the student journey and the university as a place of learning, development and experiences:

• journey: path, exploration, progress, direction

• thread: commonality, links, binding

• time: occasions, markers, past, future

• movement: freedom, openness, flexibility

• structure: grids, regularity, predictability, measurable

• irregularity: flexibility, individuality, meandering, wandering, discovery.

The threads of woven cloth comprise the warp (strong, structured, predictable and keeping everything in place) and the weft (threaded in and out of the warp – wandering in and out within the structure). The threads are built up layer by layer – forming something greater than the sum of their parts, in the same way that knowledge is gathered, added to and built on.

On the subject of line, Walter Crane wrote:

Line is... a language, a most sensitive and vigorous speech of many dialects... It... can appeal to our emotions and evoke our passionate and poetic sympathies with both the life of humanity and wild nature.

Archive research

The development of the design involved research into three key areas and combined material found in Preston’s three archives: UCLan Archives; Harris Museum and Art Gallery Archive; Lancashire Archives.

• The Harris Institute prospectuses from 1893–94, 1908–1909 and 1915–16. These contain detailed syllabuses for the cotton spinning, and cotton weaving and designing courses. As well as covering mechanical and technical areas such as ‘electricity for textiles students’, ‘textile mechanics’ and ‘practical mathematics’, the courses gave a thorough grounding in the design process in the ‘textile art’ modules, including subjects such as ‘the planning and design of pattern’, ‘pattern, proportion and scale’, ‘leading lines and distribution of parts and masses and the general arrangement’, ‘nature study’, ‘the study of and practice in the production of such types of patterns as geometric, interlacing, counter change, scroll, arabesque, floral and animal’ and ‘traditional and historical styles’.

• Books about the theory and history of ornament and design principles for pattern and decorative arts, covering the topics listed in the course syllabus including: Analysis of Ornament: The Characteristics of Styles (Ralph Nicholson Wornum. 1884), Line and Form (Walter Crane, 1902), The Principles of Design: A Textbook for Teachers, Students and Craftsmen (G. Woolliscroft Rhead, 1905), Grammar of Ornament (Owen Jones, 1856), Advanced Textile Design (William Watson, 1905).

• Textbooks, books from the course reading lists and UCLan archives that contain much technical information and diagrams about spinning and weaving, and a notebook from a student studying similar courses at Burnley Technical School.

(Photos 1–4: University of Central Lancashire)