Now in its ninth year, Squire & Partners’ award-winning Winter Windows is an annual collaboration between a group of Lambeth school children and designers from the practice. The annual workshop challenges the children to make their own design which are then transformed into bespoke lights.
This year, Squire & Partners invited a group of Year 6 students from Van Gogh Primary School in Stockwell to take on this challenge, working around the theme, ‘Dreamland’.
Continuing for its third year, The Southbank Centre also commissioned Squire & Partners to upcycle their own Winter Windows display for the Queen Elizabeth Hall. These have been designed by the Year 6 children at Oasis Academy Johanna in Waterloo, reimagined with a playful twist.
The final designs, which include a welcoming wave, a flying heart and fanciful faces, will illuminate Brixton over the winter months.
Team Squire & Partners modelshop team, Van Gogh Primary School
Status Completed 2025
The Workshop
Over the course of two workshops run by the practice, both schools were challenged to create interactive shapes associated with the theme of ‘Dreamland’, celebrating the imagination and dreams of Brixton’s young community — a bright expression of their own stories coming to life against a Brixton backdrop.
Workshops were held Downstairs at The Department Store to test and work up a final design into one continuous line which could be woven onto a metal grid to create the chosen shape.
Armed with coloured pens, string and pipe cleaners, the children progressed their designs and presented their final idea.
The Winning Designs
A panel of judges from Squire & Partners selected a series of designs, combining drawings where possible to maximise the number of designs included in the display.
Squire & Partners’ model makers weaved 360 LED Neon Flex through wire mesh frames to transform the sketches into physical lights, exactly as drawn. The modelshop team then installs the finished lights at the Southbank Centre and the Department Store
