King’s College London is stamping its mark on history with traditional stone carved lettering.

King’s College London’s new Bush House campus buildings centred around the East courtyard. Each of the building access points to the courtyard all featured elegant stone-carved lettering above the entrance bulkhead, except for one which connected the North and South wing building.

As part of the overall strategy to Bush House, we devised a design that would incorporate this entrance reminiscing in history and feature a new sign carved into the entrance bulkhead.

We assisted Atelier Works with developing the new entrance sign by tracing the pre-existing letters featured on the various other entrances connecting to the North East and South East wings.

The rubbings are then digitalised and adapted to form the necessary words ‘SOUTH WING NORTH WING’. To transfer the digital form of the words created for SOVTH WING NORTH WING entrance, we enlisted the services of Philip Surey.

Philip is a trusted signwriter whom we have had the pleasure of collaborating on numerous project including Tate Britain and Vajrasana Retreat Centre.

The sign is hand-drawn in situ, then delicately chiselled into the stone with a consistent technique and form to create a V shape cut of the letterforms. The letters are hand-painted in masonry paint to resemble the other courtyard entrances.

Bush House is a Grade II* Listed building and required planning approval and listed building consent, a requirement that we managed and facilitated.

Graphic Design — © Atelier Works
Architects — © LTS Architects / © JRA
Works under the direction at — © Whybrow Pedrola
Signwriter — © Philipsurey