Alex Chinneck unveils a reclining facade in a London square

The three-day London festival organisers call Clerkenwell Design Week, involves 17 venues and 200 showrooms within a square mile of central London. Activating one of the oldest areas of the city, the annual conclave of craft is worth touring to admire the interplay of innovative design with the ancient streetscape, most enjoyably where collaborative installations pop up beneath a Gothic arch or cobbled cul-de-sac.

This setting inspired the artist Alex Chinneck to tackle another one of his architectural disruptions, using his typical flair for rendering flexible the inflexible. Having avoided working with brick after making a name for himself building a zip-front house in Ashfield, a splitting facade in London and a sliding house in Margate, Chinneck has used the Tudor and Georgian environs of Charterhouse Square to inform his latest work, a freestanding brick sculpture called A Week at the Knees.

Some 5.5 metres high and 13.5 metres long, the undulating Georgian facade might be the most captivating of the festival’s 14 outdoor installations. Chinneck designed it to look as if it were seated on the neighbourhood green with bent knees — an escapist fantasy crafted from 7,000 bricks. These were bonded one by one to a 320-metre skin of stainless steel, repurposed from the former US embassy in Grosvenor Square. The slightly bent Crittall windows were similarly contextually informed, custom-made to slide into place along with the bespoke doors and pipework. The glueing and lime pointing were done at Chinneck’s farm in Kent, then shipped to the site in three sections, each weighing four tonnes.

The artist called his process ‘playing around with origami architecture’ and emphasised the fragility of the structure, at only one brick thickness. ‘The engineering was far from straightforward,’ he said, name-checking the Cambridge engineers Smith and Wallwork. ‘I took ambitious and complex paths to create this playful, thoughtful moment. Brick arches are such an enjoyable thing.’

Indeed, the fluid arch provides an interactive element to the sculpture. Visitors can walk through and around it, which wouldn’t have been possible had Chinneck adhered it to the surface of an existing building, as with his older pieces.

The installation is Chinneck’s 18th public sculpture and will remain in Charterhouse Square for six weeks before moving on to a permanent location.