Bazaar — Cartoon Family Group, Shopping Mall Atrium, Dubai, UAE

A shopping mall atrium looks like the easiest site in the world and is one of the hardest. The floor is not a floor.

The brief

A mall wanted a seasonal landmark for a triple-height atrium — to stand for eight weeks, then be struck and stored and reused the following year. Four figures, two adults and two children, reading as one group, cartoon-proportioned and large enough to be legible from the third-floor balcony. It had to come in through the goods lift, go up overnight, and come out again the same way.

Weight on a suspended floor

Atrium floors hang over the retail below, and their allowance is calculated for footfall, not for sculpture. A stone or cast group at this size would have run to several tonnes and would have needed a structural survey and probably a temporary spread frame. The four figures weigh 96 kg together, which put the group inside the floor’s existing allowance with no survey at all — the decisive fact of the whole project. It also meant two people could carry each figure up the service corridor instead of rigging through the atrium rooflight.

Eight weeks, twice a year

A piece installed and struck every season is damaged in handling, not in display. Every figure is a hollow shell with a 25 mm lifting boss moulded into the back of the shoulders, so the harness point is part of the casting rather than a strap around the neck. The bases are separate cast units bolted on with four M10s each, and the whole group packs into a single 1.2 m flight case.

Cleanliness under a skylight

Atria collect dust, and a striped surface shows it. The pattern is painted in four colours with the same gloss level, so there is no sheen difference between stripes to catch the eye, and the clear coat is a hard, slightly slick polyurethane chosen so a dry microfibre cloth removes dust rather than smears it. The family is washed once a week by the mall’s own cleaning team with nothing but water.

Under the skylight

The group stands on a low 150 mm platform at the centre of the atrium, rotated so the two children face the main escalator bank. The mall’s own words are in the panel above.