200 ALDERSGATE

Artists
SOTIS FILIPPIDES

Medium
24 carat gold / platinum/ clay

Client
Savills IM

200 ALDERSGATE, LONDON
200 Aldersgate is an iconic office building which benefits from its proximity to St Paul’s and the City of London, as well as the vibrant culture of Farringdon, Clerkenwell, and Shoreditch.

Curatorial Approach

Sited within an elegant seating area at the heart of the South Entrance to 200 Aldersgate’s vast atrium, Shard was conceived as a work in dialogue with its ground. Seven metres of jagged, blade-like forms in 24 carat gold and platinum, rise and fall like a skyline in miniature, sparkling under the spotlight into a journeyed spectacle for anyone walking past.

The curatorial premise was material as much as visual: Filippides works in rough, stone-flecked clay from Stoke-on-Trent, fired at 1,000°C and hand-scraped to leave the surface pitted and textured — an ancient art form, grainy and geological, gold pooling into the ceramic rather than sitting on top of it. What looks hewn from stone is, in fact, feather-light — a tension between weight and lightness that runs through the whole piece.

That tension finds its counterpart in the site. 200 Aldersgate sits at the edge of the old Roman fort of Londinium, close by the line of the city wall and its gate — ground once assembled, like the mosaics of Roman London, from individual fragments set together to form a whole. The commissioned piece, “Reflections” continues that logic: a contemporary work built, quite literally, of fragments, answering a city that has always built itself the same way. Ancient and futuristic at once — a true reflection of London.