Maple Ridge Community Mosaic: Design Process

Following the public pattern making workshop series held across the City of Maple Ridge during February 2019 we returned to our studio to work on the next stage of the Maple Ridge Community Mosaic, the Design Phase.

We had collected and documented approximately 540 unique triangular patterns during the public workshops and now it was time to study them all and consider ways in which we could blend as many of them together to form a cohesive whole.

During the workshops we had encouraged participants to use groups of themed colours that represented the seasons and this helped us arrange different patterns together.  Over a six week period we tested hundreds of combinations of patterns and colour combinations before we settled on the final design.

Once the final design was approved by the City of Maple Ridge we were ready to begin the next phase: fabrication…almost!

All of the tiles for the Maple Ridge Community Mosaic need to be custom made for this project.  To make sure we ordered the correct numbers of coloured tiles to cover the 410 SF wall spaces inside the Maple Ridge Leisure Centre each of the 14,000+ tiles in the mosaic had to be counted first!