"smile"

Saturday 2nd July 2016 marked the Centenary celebrations of the famous Cunard building in Liverpool – one of the city’s world–famous Three Graces. To bring the Cunard company’s legacy to life, the Hardscape team was commissioned by BCA Landscape in collaboration with design agency Smiling Wolf to craft an epic 50-metre granite stone seat.

With a purpose-built development on the cards in its home town of Wrexham, Wales; Moneypenny had a 10-acre plot with which to design a new office space which could house up to 1,000 employees. However, unlike many traditional office projects of this nature; Moneypenny approached the building design in a very unique way. The £15m headquarters’ top line brief was to create a development which would literally ‘put a smile on people’s faces’.

We have collaborated with the “Smile for Africa” Foundation to transform a classroom wall into a writable wall with ESCREO whiteboard paint for the first time in Africa. The charity foundation is a wonderful initiative for a better life filled with smiles for children from different regions of Africa. Thanks to them, children can now feel the special magic that whiteboard paint can bring to them. Daniel Delibashev, founder of the Foundation, shares that they were used to improvised chalkboard walls, i.e. black-painted concrete, which were not as hygienic as one can imagine. However, children now write on a white writable wall with markers which attracts their attention and concentration better and contributes to better learning. Daniel shares that both children and teachers are very excited to see and use a different method than traditional blackboards. It is an “archaic” method which is widely used in Africa and is quite inconvenient because over time the boards start turning white and it is difficult to distinguish what is written on them.  Other issues that whiteboard paint now solves include the often need for the chalkboard walls to be repainted, which used to create a lot of difficulties and additional costs. It has proven to be quite uncomfortable, because the dust used to stick to the hands and clothes of the children and to enter the eyes, damaging their vision. Both students and teachers now want to replace all the blackboards with walls painted with whiteboard paint, because the convenience and joy they bring are indisputable.