Service Graphics is two months into a 14-month project for property developer Stanhope at the White City site, part of a wider redevelopment that will create up to 5,000 new homes, 400 shops and 12ha of public space.
Called simply Television Centre, Stanhope chose a striking black and white graphic for its hoarding, one of the first jobs in a £250,000 contract with Service Graphics, part of the £330m-turnover St Ives Group.
The 1,500sqm wrap, which went up two weeks ago and covers a multi-story car park, is the biggest part of the project thus far, which includes three 90x3m hoardings bisected by an LED stripe and interior wrapping using printed canvas.
Service Graphics project manager Giles Davies said the graphic was printed on 19 16x4.6m sections on 500gsm PVC using a 5m-wide Durst Rho 512 roll-fed printer, taking three days to print.
It took two weeks to slot each section into individual aluminium frames and install them on a combination of concrete colums and brickwork at different levels. The £38m-turnover business uses an in-house installation team who abseil and use cherry-pickers. It had five staff on site.
He said it was a challenge attaching the graphic in a smooth surface across such a large area.
“It’s not until we start drilling into the building and getting problems with the fixings that we know how it will go.”
But he added: “It’s not particularly problematic. It’s something we’ve got experience of doing and we’ve done it for many years.
"We didn’t have much time really – five weeks from order to completion. But you’ve just got to get on with it.”
The canvas wall wrapping has been installed in the Stanhope marketing suite where it was used to wow Japanese investors. The 10x5m fabric is just 'paste and apply' which allows for seamless coverage, Davies said.
Fellow project manager Andrew Elliot said this side of the Service Graphics business was increasingly popular. “We’ve got involved in a lot of large construction companies over the past couple of years, it’s a great product. It’s long lasting, it’s more robust than using wallpaper. We’ve done quite a lot of retail too."
More 2x5m graphics will be placed on a railway arch and another 30x2m section of the site.
Davies added: “The client was very pleased. This is the first phase of quite a lot of work that’s going to be progressing."
Television Centre will have 950 homes, more than 46,450sqm of offices, hotel and other leisure uses and a new Soho House club.
