TambourOne mould. One rental set.
Five things it builds.

AI-generated visual: a long view down a baroque palace garden at blue hour — a gravel allée between clipped topiary and low parterres, the lit palace across the full width behind, and in front a gateway wall of 400 mm cast stone cubes, each face carrying a shallow rosette relief, dark painted panels set into the grid, the name TAMBOUR cast in relief across its upper courses, and a square opening under a dark steel lintel lit warm from within, with guests in evening dress walking through it and others sitting on the knee-height block benches either side.

At a glance

Design thinking: Cast the identity into the block instead of printing it on, because print is what fails first on a tour.

Problem: A one-night event hires almost everything it is made of, so almost nothing in it belongs to the brand.
Approach: We took the deck's one repeatable idea and drew it until a fabricator could quote it, marking every figure we assumed.
Outcome: A concept study: five dimensioned sheets, a module with a block count, and a list of what the venue and the production partner still have to answer.

Role: A collaboration at concept stage: nothing was built, no visitor attended, and the deck does not record who drew what.
What we designed: Spatial concept and guest route
Dimensioned plan set, five sheets
The 400 mm module and its four uses
Brand built into the structure
Conduct and the object that leaves
The open questions, named
Platforms: Event space
Modular block system
Cast takeaway

The decision

A printed wrap peels at the corner; a cast relief cannot.

A Renaissance and Baroque Prague gala in three parts: gateway, hall, royal garden. The deck carries exactly two dimensions in twenty-two pages: a 40 × 40 cm block and a 3 × 3 × 3 m LED cube.

Casting is our proposal, not a client decision: 6 mm relief, a 3° draft, the accent square pigmented into the mix, so a chipped corner is the same colour (marks 2, 3).

One mould, four uses, 640 blocks.

The block is 400 mm on every face, the deck's only structural figure. The figures are in the table below.

One mould, repeated, is what makes 640 of them affordable — and what makes marks 4 to 7 the same object at five scales: the gateway, the garden plinths, the bar fronts, the stage riser, the cube base.

Concept drawing: a sheet showing the 400 mm block in face, plan and section at six times scale, beside gateway, plinth, bar front and stage riser elevations at 1:50. Concept visualisation — not built.

The two things the deck already knew it wanted.

AI-generated visual: a three-metre luminous cube washing crimson and gold across two faces, standing on a two-course plinth of 400 mm blocks with lit brass lattice cells set into it, in a baroque palace forecourt at blue hour with guests around it. — The cubeA 3 × 3 × 3 m cube at the entrance — the deck's other given dimension. Concept visualisation — not built. Collaboration; concept stage only.

AI-generated visual: a stage riser and stepped surround built from stacked 400 mm blocks in a baroque hall, with five block plinths carrying lit marble busts in front of it, brass lattice cells and crimson blocks set into the courses, under hard raking light. — The stageStage surround and statue plinths are the same block — hired statuary on the client's own grid. Concept visualisation — not built. Collaboration; concept stage only.

A 46 000 envelope, split three ways.

The deck gives no venue, floor area or guest number, so the shell is assumed: a 46 000 × 26 400 envelope split into a 7 200 gateway, a 28 000 hall and a 10 800 garden.

Mark 8 is the compromise: anything on a hanging canvas or a tablecloth is light on a surface, gone when the projector goes off. The block is what they keep.

Concept drawing: a dimensioned hall plan showing the forecourt and LED cube, a block portal, eighteen round tables, a stage, a garden with statue plinths, service and technical zones, and a dashed circulation ring. Concept visualisation — not built.

The same block, indoors and in the hand.

AI-generated visual: a baroque hall dressed for a gala, its screens, bust plinths, bar front and stepped stage surround all built from the same 400 mm cubes, lit brass lattice cells scattered through them, TAMBOUR cast in relief above the stage, and hanging canvases over eighteen round tables. — The hallScreens, plinths, the bar front and the stage surround are one block, counted out.

AI-generated visual: sixteen square cast-stone trial tiles in a four-by-four grid under raking light, running from a plain face through incised sgraffito to deep cast relief, with two of woven brass lattice and two pigmented crimson. — The surface trialsCut or cast into the block. The test is whether it still reads in raking light.

Zone by zone, figure by figure — and where the staff stand.

The 400 block and the 3000 cube come from the deck. Every other figure is assumed.

01The module
One mould, 640 blocks
- 400 on every face: the deck’s only printed figure
- Hollow GRG, 18 mm shell, 11 kg, four 50 mm lugs
- Lugs register the courses dry, no wet joint
- One silicone mould off one CNC pattern: 150 pulls
- Three moulds, 640 blocks, 30 working days
- 7.0 t on one 7.5-tonne truck
- Faces 220-grit matte, arrises 3 mm, stacked eight high
- 180 covers that can be served beat 240 that cannot
02Forecourt
Outside the doors, before anyone is greeted
- LED cube 3000³, four faces of 6 × 3 cabinets at 500 × 1000
- Plinth 3200 × 3200, two courses, 800 high — mark 7
- Eye 1600, standing off 2300, cube top 3800
- 2000 clear walk-around, Ø1500 turning
- ≈9 kW, one 32 A three-phase feedOpen
03A · Gateway
The threshold, 7200 deep
- Portal 9600 × 4000, opening 2400 × 2400
- 156 blocks in the wall, 90 in the flanks
- Stepped flanks 400–1200, lowest is sit-on
- Welcome bar 4800, cloaks 4800
04B · Immersive hall
28 000 of the plan
- 18 rounds of Ø1800, 10 covers, 4000 grid, 3000 chair envelope
- Table bay: Ø600 bust, tapers at 560 R, 600 centre kept clear
- Stage 12000 × 6000, riser 800
- Ring 2100 clear, cross aisle 1800, 1000 between chair backs
- 4 hanging canvases, 4 projector positions
05C · Royal garden
After dinner, 10 800 deep
- 5 plinths, 800 × 800 × 1200, 12 blocks each — mark 5
- Topiary line Ø900 at 1800, 3600 opening
- Garden bar 6000, champagne fountain Ø1600
- Statuary hired or cast — no source namedOpen
06Service and technical
Behind a demountable screen, 3600 deep
- Plating / buffer kitchen 12000 × 3000
- Dimmers, media server, comms 6400 × 3000
- Stillages and block store
- FOH control 3600 × 2400, sight line to stage
07Conduct
12 · Where staff stand, and where they may not
- Nobody is greeted at the cube
- One host at the portal. A table number, nothing else.
- Garden side of the topiary line, always
- Never between a guest and the stage
- No printed mark on anyone, all night

Open = the deck gives nothing and we would not guess it.

The threshold is the module, at architectural scale.

24 blocks wide, 10 courses high, a 6 × 6 opening: 9 600 × 4 000, 2 400 × 2 400 clear, 400 deep. The four courses above it are the lintel band, where the name is cast — mark 4.

Blocks thread over a 60 × 60 steel spine on a ballasted base plate. Assumed: a 3 200 free-standing wall on a guest route is an engineer's drawing, not ours.

Concept drawing: an enlarged 1:50 plan of the gateway threshold with the welcome bar and cloaks, the portal elevation in 400 mm blocks with inset painting panels, and a section through the wall. Concept visualisation — not built.

A guest has been holding the takeaway all evening.

Marks 10 and 11: the takeaway is a 100 mm reduction of the same relief, off the same moulds and mix — a coaster under every glass at dinner, assume 640, and the same object in the hand at the cloaks. Nobody is told they are the same.

Mark 9: the garden is the only place anyone is spoken to about the business, once, late.

AI-generated visual: two hands holding a 100 mm cast tile with deep baroque relief and a crimson square at its centre, raked by a single low light, with an identical tile under the foot of a glass on the dark cloth beside it.

The photograph this scheme is built for has the projectors off.

From the centre of the cross aisle on the stage axis, eye at 1 600, ninety seconds after the second course: the lintel band with the name cast in it, eighteen tables of candlelight, nothing projected. Two 26° profiles on the band at 15° above horizontal, because 6 mm of relief only exists in raking light.

The name is cast twice all evening, at architectural scale, and appears nowhere else.

What a fabricator, an engineer and the venue still have to answer.

A concept study can say what it has not resolved.

D01
Cast relief, or printed wrap?
Context
The deck wraps the blocks in print, where print wins across one night and a cast set wins across a tour.
Options
- Printed wrap — days, re-skin per event
- Cast relief — ~30 working days, one artwork cost
Decision
Cast, as a proposal, with the lead time beside it.
Why
The mould count, the pull rate and the lead time are a fabricator's to confirm or refuse.
D02
What holds up a 4 000 wall and a 3 m outdoor cube?
Context
A free-standing block wall on a guest route and a three-metre cube outdoors are structural questions: overturning, ballast, wind and floor loading.
Decision
Open, and drawn as open: the steel spine, the base plate and the 800 kg of ballast are shown as assumptions.
Why
Drawing an assumption is how it gets checked, and leaving it off is how it gets built wrong.
D03
Will the venue carry four canvases and four projectors?
Context
The hanging canvases sit over the table field, where the sight lines to the stage also run, on rigging the venue owns.
Decision
Open. Positions are drawn so the conflict is visible; the venue and the production partner resolve it.
Why
The canvases and the stage want the same air — better on a drawing than in a get-in.