Architects of Air, founded by Alan Parkinson, is a company that designs pneumatic sculptures where visitors can tour the designs and share a space drenched in color and endless shapes. As artistic director, Alan has given this type of sculpture the generic name of “luminarium”—and just as a fish moves through water in an aquarium so visitors to luminaria journey in light.
Recalling how the company came about, Alan says: “Prior to 1992, I had been working as the leader of a project that built inflatable structures. It was a social project with charitable status that was designed to serve people with special needs and disadvantaged communities, and its workforce was offenders who had been sentenced to do community service.” The project folded in 1992, but Alan was determined to continue. “I settled on the name ‘Architects of Air’ as a way to signify the scale of what I wanted to do, and I also wanted to remove the stigma (at least one that existed in my eyes) of inflatables as being trivial things for kids.”
Alan describes entering a luminarium as a simple experience, where you are enveloped and cut off from the outside world, maybe a bit lost as you encounter elements of radiant light and color. They’re all elements that can be experienced elsewhere—going camping, in a forest, looking at the clouds lit in the sky. “Some visitors my go in not knowing what they will find and will leave having found nothing. Others may go in having found consolation, inspiration, and peace,” Alan says. “Fortunately, the overwhelming response is that people will come out with a smile on their faces for whatever reason.”
One of Alan’s most memorable designs is the Exxopolis which was in celebration of Architects of Air’s 20th year. “The Main Dome, in particular, combined elements that visually grab me, that pushed my own technical boundaries in terms of forms I could create, and which also involved community participation in the creation of some elements,” he says. “It shows a muqarnas-style ceiling where I used a net of webbing to define the form and windows of a Penrose tiling that were made by different community groups in Nottingham. The dome reflected my dual inspirations of Gothic cathedral and Islamic architecture.”
Alan says he’s inspired by structures and being caught by the light on surfaces. “I’m drawn in by a kind of oscillation, the indeterminacy of what is light and what is material. I like the ambiguity as I think it leads to some kind of mental state—in the same way that Islamic patterns can work with their shifting figures and grounds.”
Alan feels fortunate that he stumbled on inflatables as something that would interest him and something he could do. “It’s great that it turned out to be something that people liked and that I was able to make a living doing it. That was lucky. That was success, and I appreciate my fortune.”
As with many business, COVID-19 has had an impact on Architects of Air, causing the workshop to be shut down. “We don’t know if we’ll exist next year. We’ll re-start part-time [in September] at a very low-level to minimize the drain on our remaining resources,” Alan says. “We’re half-way through building our latest luminarium design, and I would like to see it completed. We have just completed an application to the Arts Council of England for a grant—our first ever grant application. If we get it then that will extend our life till hopefully the touring work that is our lifeblood comes in.”
