A colour map of Piccadilly Circus, this thesis for my Masters course was the resolution of my research question, “How can I map/represent a city space through the lens of colour?” This map covers the five main roads at Piccadilly as they branch off from the famous Eros Fountain. It consists of what I call spontaneously occurring ‘colour palettes’ — instances where the colours of the windows, doorways, shop facades, bricks,stones and architectural elements within the space come together in unplanned chromatic harmony.

My thesis supported my contention that elements like colour form a silent wallpaper to our actions within the city space, and subtly affect our experience of it. I wanted to bring these ‘background’ elements to the fore, highlighting the fact that we should be paying more attention to them.

I picked up colour palettes every 10 feet on a preplanned route up and down the selected roads.These were simpified, vectorised and compiled into five accordion folded books — one for each road. Each book holds two smaller booklets — one for each side of the road. Along with these books, the viewer is provided with a map which outlines my route and the logic behind the data collection — allowing him or her to revisit the space and locate my colour palettes.

The overall branding of the project consisted of a symbolic depiction of the map of the five streets of Piccadilly Circus that I mapped. 
The band holding the books together held this symbol, as did each individual booklet. On the booklets, the relevant street was highlighed.