A permanent landmark on a traffic island at the entrance to the village of Doe Lea, the brief was put forth in an open design competition, wherein 3 finalists were selected including two architects, Tonkin Liu and Charles Holland Architects. Tonkin Liu’s Dancing Flowers of Doe Lea originates from the name “Doe Lea,” the village’s rich mining heritage, and its bucolic rolling hills accentuated by softly undulating hedgerows. Spoils from old mining pits have over time formed a series of mysteriously alluring curving lines in the landscape. Exploring the idea of lines and using the principles of anamorphic projection, the design process built on the site context and played with artist Paul Klee’s concept of drawing as “a line going for a walk.” 

The structure is made from curved 114mm diameter steel tubes, painted in bright red, undulating and rising from a wild flower meadow covering the entire traffic island. Wildflower stencils are painted in multiple colours on the reverse side, designed with the help of the local school children. Different views unfold on approach. Then, at a specific position near the entrance to the village, the lines align to reveal the name “Doe Lea.” once past this position, the name is lost again to the abstract curvilinear form. By using the structure to assert the phonetically and typographically beautiful name, the sign structure also seeks to find a voice for a community with a lost identify.

“I love it because there is only one of these in the world. It is audacious, it’s bold. We live in an ex-mining village with a rich history. It was very easy for us to have ended up with something about the past. The Dancing Flowers of Doe Lea looks backwards and forwards in time, it covers the whole. People are surprised when they get to the point where they see the name in the lines. What I love most about it is that, even when the wildflowers are not in bloom, it really looks as though it is coming out of the land, as if the earth has given birth to this sign.”

- William Lane, long-time Doe Lea local resident and photographer