we have been waiting for this facade to be completed for 110 years the building was purpose-built as a gallery in 1901 and the original architect art Charles Townsend Harrison had always dreamed of having a frieze on the outside a mural which would in some way tell the story of what the building was about in 2009 when we acquired the adjoining library it suddenly became glaringly obvious that there was a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle when I was asked to make a proposal I wanted to try and explore my understanding if if the architecture around the East End and what I'd seen and noticed over the years and I also wanted to give a kind of gift to the street there's always a lot of demolition going on buildings going up buildings being torn down it's never a sort of peaceful place and I wanted to just try and think about how you could make something that was a kind of moment of pause you know something that you could look at it gave it a spark so I you know that was really where it sort of started and then I was also thinking about the Tree of Life that's on the facade of the Whitechapel and how in places like the East End you see if it's a bud layer and and weeds and things growing out of buildings and popping up all over the place and these sort of funny lately forgotten roof bits but you know it's been a very very long and laborious process I'm Kennedy and this is the Bronze Age boundary the waxes arrived pretty much in this condition you see numbered the next stages so we transfer this number onto the back we now need to prepare them for casting which involves putting on a feeder system and be welded quite well with a hot tool and then it's a question of just building up further it's amazing how big a structure you can build just in wax this will become a funnel and to which the metal flows as this one here is finished we'll take it through and I'll show you the next stage here you can see the first coat being applied it's a particular mix that's good for getting detail so here we're putting on it's a ceramic base bit like sort of a cream if you like then has sand applied which gives it a bit of body for the next coach to bind to and then so on we build up here's one that's had a lot more coats applied you can see how the thickness is building up the next stage is to melt out the wax we melted the wax out of the mold we've just cooked them for several hours at about seven eight hundred degrees being melted as we speak this is a pouring bin Selter kill its first job is to cook out second job is container to hold the next job is to [Applause] give it support this is a reason the unique [Music] there's been rotates it also has a vibrational mechanism owner to bed the sand down many other places have this this is a piece it's been cast and pretty much finished ready for gold leafing we've cleaned up all the feeder system giving it a final polish up it's ready to go and we offer a thousand year guarantee with our work so every job we do is has a potential to be around for a very long time I did a lot of walking around actually went into the city quite a lot I'm trying to look at old and new and how they were sort of busted up together and what it was that made things sort of stand out and I started thinking about gold leaf I've done a lot of silver leafing in the studio you know it's a beautiful traditional process and we thought my mother used to do a lot of gold leafing so I've you know it's a child I need the process it's not something it's not like complete sort of magic seeing it there is it my bling sculpture I don't think so I'm hoping it's still very quiet actually but you know it does need to stand out and I've only I've used gold for only those reasons not because I want to have some sort of status symbol for the sculpture or a status symbol for the Whitechapel this is 23 and three-quarter carat gold leaf it's basically very very thin and if you rub in your fingers it basically disappears two to nothing you can make bonds look like it's made out of solid gold essentially well now I'm applying this yellow enamel which is acts as a sealant for the bonds because the bond is going outside it helps to protect the bonds so I'm bout to apply gold leaf onto this bond sculpture so I just systematically go along and apply by the leaf section by section so basically what I'm doing here is I'm just dusting off all the loose leaf from from the gilding stage and as I go along kind of they'll be little areas where bits of gold haven't stuck but I can then use all these scrap bits of gold and sort of tamper them back in I probably killed including faulting and finishing up this probably maybe three or four a day through your day but once I finished this stage I kind of leave it to hang up to drive or to cure for 24 hours and then we'll have another look at it and there might be little areas where we might need to go back and fault as well as the blonds sections are also gilding the original terracotta sections outside the Whitechapel this is like this is a mock-up section of one of those areas and these will work in unison with the bronze sections which will be fixed in various locations there's a fantastic amount of windows on the facade and I thought well maybe if I sort of somehow try and integrate some more windows but using my sort of signature style of sort of making something kind of inside out window so that's what I've done so there are these four terracotta windows on the main part of the facade and then the surrounding areas are covered in these sort of gold Leafs but in order to make it work it has to be exaggerated because from the street you know it's much further away you know layers happen in cities and London has this incredible amount of layers of history here it's one of the oldest cities and it's just extraordinary from you know Roman ruins up it just is you know amazing so I think it's not just about looking up it's about you know taking care to understand a layering actually but yeah if you look up just remember don't walk into a road walk backwards [Laughter] [Music] right what we have here is the blaster model we originally visited site took all the profile details from the existing windows then produced a CAD drawing which has all of that information on it once the model is completed the coat it with a resin called shellac that seals a surface means we can then make the plaster model from that we press the clay in beyond and smear it to get all the air out of it based if we took the slab in remove the air in it so probably in the kill more before the kiln which is just crack I'm gonna go the weapons of sport because obviously it sag down so who I've been basically all she didn't show you the idea there's four walls of the base and we press to play into the mold the walls are separate so when the mold has been filled we take the band off and strip the mold [Music] finishing the block book Oh although depictions out the faces making sure there's no major wind holes air in the play just getting all the imperfections out really this is a homemade knowledge stole that saw blade fan down we use all sorts of stuff finish the actual edge it's an old piece of leather from a leather coat it's not short page the manufacturing method that we're using is exactly the same method that was used 100 hundred 20 years ago when the gallery was originally [Music] [Music] the product that we saw earlier on would have been pressed and dried has been loaded onto the kiln cars wheeled in the kiln sent fired up to eleven is seventy degrees centigrade it's held at that temperature for a period of a few hours and then slowly cooled the entire firing process takes about four days from here the product will be dipped in water and something that takes up moisture and then they'll be packed on pallets ready for delivery in society when you've actually done the job you see the pictures before and after yeah and that makes me proud to see what done [Music] and it was really hard to work on something for so long and not be able to see it until everybody else does so I was definitely feeling anxious about it but I am delighted to say that I'm very happy with the work which is what I wanted to be able to say you know it's a bit light for me it's a bit like a gust of wind on the high street and instead of blowing litter that these franchises are responsible for actually blowing gold leaves up the side of the building actually it's so light it feels like a breath of air has come along and just you know like a dandelion clock you know pops away hundred years of history 110 years of history so I think it's kind of a very original and new direction actually I think the Rachel the building is a very well-loved and art landmark and I think she's pitched it so beautifully right but it isn't not trying to dominate it's just trying in a way to get us to look at it again this is my office with most wonderful view of the front of the Whitechapel and as it was unveiled on Tuesday I think it was Tuesday morning the Sun Shan and glinted back on the gold leaf is just wonderful was it gold-plated go Lilly go bleep good sip yes I catch it good see a bit of investment in the area know the Olympics is coming I think it's amazing I think I think every High Street should have one yeah I'm leaving Lee about 30 years in this area yeah that is yeah this is good for us and it's a good place I must say most of it apart from the terracotta work was done in the East End by East End craftspeople and artists a quiet gift to be stoned by her you