Lowe SMS & Partners

In 1994, Brian Clarke was commissioned by the advertising firm Lowe SMS & Partners to create an artwork for a site in Manhattan's W.R. Grace Building, where their headquarters then occupied four floors. The 50-storey skyscraper, located at 1114 Avenue, New York, has a distinctive curved façade, and was built by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and designer Gordon Bunshaft in 1974.

In response, Clarke designed a monumental floor mosaic for one of the rooms, which was made of hand-cut Venetian glass smalti, measuring 120 x 144 inches, and was situated in the ante-room to the dining room at Lowe SMS.

Additionally, Clarke's Chelsea Window was installed in the headquarters, above the office's main stairway as a backlit wall of glass, its glow and scale connecting multiple floors vertically. First conceived of for the Swan and Edgar Building in London, this work was then commissioned by Sir Frank Lowe for his home in Glebe Place, Chelsea, in 1986, once the art nouveau artist and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh's residence. The Chelsea Window is now installed in the Norman Foster-designed Capital City Academy in London, where both Clarke and Lowe are governors.