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Rob Edkins

Published: 14-May-2009

Rob Edkins, founder of 2D3D and the man designer Ron Arad describes as ‘fearless’ for his willingness to take on any project ‘however bizarre or surreal’, talks to Jamie Mitchell about rock ’n’roll trains, shape-shifting dresses, and Zaha Hadid

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At 2D3D’s headquarters in an industrial estate in north-west London, director Rob Edkins is describing the stage set his company built for rock band AC/DC’s latest tour: as the band launches into Rock ‘n’ Roll Train, the debut single from new album Black Ice, a life-size replica of a 1920s’ steam locomotive crashes on to the stage and lurches towards the audience, stopping just above the heads of the band members. As guitarist Angus Young duckwalks across the stage below (yes, he still wears school uniform complete with short trousers), a pair of horns grows from the front of the train. Later in the show, a giant, inflatable, bikini-clad woman, larger than life in more ways than one, rises up to straddle the ‘horny’ locomotive.

‘It was great fun to do,’ says Edkins whose company builds TV sets, sculptures, museum displays and, well, almost anything else, ‘but it was hard work’. 2D3D worked to an original design by London-based set designer
Mark Fisher Productions and was given only five weeks to create the train. It was built in 20 sections so that it can be dismantled and flown from venue to venue. ‘We achieved virtually the impossible in such a short space of time’, says Edkins, ‘but it came in on budget and absolutely delighted the client. It was just a win-win project.’

South African-born Edkins studied product design at Johannesburg College of Art and did his MA at Glasgow School of Art before settling in London. Briefly ‘seduced’ by automotive design, he eventually craved more variety: ‘I wanted to paint pictures, write ballets and scripts – when you’re young you want to do everything – but this company grew out of that desire to do some very different things,’ he says.

After graduating he began working for a company that built window displays and sets for TV and film. It was there that he met Danica Gacesa, with whom he started 2D3D 25 years ago (Gacesa later married and emigrated to Australia). ‘We wanted to broaden our horizons, says Edkins, so we started up 2D3D on my living-room floor.’

Looking around the company’s capacious workshop today, it’s hard to imagine that this high-tech operation began in a living room. Z-Stream Slide, a sculpture designed by Zaha Hadid and build by 2D3D, waits for the dust of the workshop floor to settle so that it can be sprayed with chrome paint. Its curvaceous form is instantly recognisable as Hadid’s trademark swoosh. Even in rough, unpainted fibreglass it looks otherworldly, like a cross between a play-park slide an alien spaceship. ‘Imagine how it will look when it’s finished,’ Edkins enthuses.

2D3D now employs a core workforce of 15, from fine-art graduates to specialist welders, but over the years the team has built up a huge network of trusted freelance contacts and specialist companies which have proved their skills on some very challenging projects.

The company’s input in the design process is ‘sporadic and random’, says Edkins, ‘but we like it that way. Some clients know exactly what they want, while other briefs are very open’.

When car manufacturer Proton asked 2D3D for a radical way of displaying one of its cars at a show, the brief was pretty vague. ‘I had the idea of putting a car within a gimbal [a pivoted support that allows the rotation of an object about an axis] so that it could revolve freely in every direction, [like a cell’s nucleus]. I did a sketch, sent it to the client and next morning I got a fax back saying “We love it!” and we put it into production.’

‘I’m quite happy to be given projects right from the beginning or to pick it up midway, as we did with Zaha Hadid. You’ve got to respect the work of people like that,’ he says, gesturing to the sketches and plans for another Hadid sculpture, the flora-inspired Kloris, tacked to the wall behind him. ‘Their creativity really pushes you forward.’

Kloris is a stylised flower moulded in fibreglass and sprayed in a gradient of green, which now stands in the grounds of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. Two of its 10 petals, which Edkins describes as looking like river pebbles or, more evocatively, ‘sucked toffee’, were sprayed in chrome. Hadid liked the sculpture so much that she had asked for another, this time entirely finished in chrome, which showed in the Sonnenbend Gallery in New York.

‘Each project calls for an amalgam of loads of different skills’, says Edkins. A complex display piece for bathroom company Roca involved pneumatics, animatronics, engineering and moulding. ‘It involved virtually all the workshop, says Edkins, ‘and we achieved something really spectacular. It had so many different components; if one of those components failed – if one little LED in a whole sea of LEDs didn’t work – it would stick out like a sore thumb.’

Edkins has a reputation for taking on the impossible. He recalls the moment designer and architect Ron Arad introduced him to lighting designer Ingo Maurer: ‘He said, “This is Rob, he’s fearless.”’ It’s a reputation that has stuck, bringing with it some amazing projects.

In 2007 fashion designer Hussein Chalayan called him to ask for ‘dresses that change shape by themselves’. It sounds impossible, but they did it. Intricate technology, hidden in the seams of five dresses, allowed hemlines to rise and fall, sleeves to change length and the whole cut of the dress to alter in ethereal motion, enacting the chronology of women’s fashion from 1890 to the present day for a stunned audience at the 2007 Paris Fashion Week.

‘I take what Ron said as a huge compliment,’ says Edkins. ‘I guess what he means is that we’ll bite the bullet and take on anything, and that’s what keeps the adrenaline going. You can’t just stay in your comfort zone.’

This article was first published in FX Magazine.

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