Colourfields - Panopticon

Design by Jo Rippon Architecture with artist Sophie Smallhorn.

Blackburn’s Panopticon, ‘Colourfields’, is a dramatic transformation of the former cannon battery in Blackburn’s Corporation Park, originally installed for the Park’s opening in 1857 to house two Russian cannons captured during the Crimean War.

The battery had since fallen into disrepair and the design and construction of ‘Colourfields’ enabled part of this important structure and its associations with Blackburn’s history to be preserved rather than dismantled, as would otherwise have been necessary owing to deterioration.

‘Colourfields’ uses the base of the former battery but adds a new dimension of space, height and colour with its raised viewing points and candy stripes created from pastel-coloured tiles.

From the top of the structure, the panorama of the Park below, the town beyond and distant views out towards Lytham, Southport and Fleetwood, is breathtaking.