The Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show is held annually in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea, London.

We were asked to design an installation to celebrate the show’s 100th Anniversary. Taking the well-known line of painting the roses red from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as our point of departure for the design, we created an interactive installation that used bright LED lighting behind bespoke hand-made paper-mache roses to light up a dark tunnel according to a passerby’s movement.

The wall of the tunnel was built out of fire-proofed wood and fabric and the fire-proof paper flowers were hand-made in our London studio.

The use of pure white created a bold and clean look with LED modules hidden behind the white roses, which changed colour from a soft ambient white light to various shades of red, creating a lively simulation of a lush rose garden.

The lighting pattern animations made a different pulsing formation that gave off the energy of a time-lapsed bloom that travelled through the tunnel in an undulating wave.

The wave was triggered with motion sensors at both entrances of the tunnel.