A way out of the park after dark,
without lighting the whole wood.
Closing time at the Burrell. The stones you walked past are still glowing.
Someone steps onto the path. The nearest stones wake first.
Each stone wakes the four or five ahead of it, so the next one is always in view.
The ones you have passed fade after 90 seconds. The wood either side stays dark.
At the stop, the Mother cairn: a seat, a lean rail, and a board that knows when the shuttle comes.
The shuttle comes up the road. The stones led here; it takes you on.
Concept visualisation · modelled and rendered in Blender
Developed from a GSA MDes team project with The Burrell Collection. GSA project record ↗
The product family, 3D models, scenes, renders and service details on this page.
Concept, modelled and rendered. Not yet built or tested.
The brief asked how to cut car journeys to Pollok Country Park and The Burrell Collection. Our partner interviews pointed somewhere narrower: leaving the park after dark in winter.
We traced each thing partners told us to an insight and a direction, so every later decision could be traced back to something someone actually said.
Quotes from the team’s partner interviews, 2026.
At night the park’s light sits on destinations: the museum, the car park. The paths between them go dark, signs cannot be read, and nothing joins one bright place to the next. Visible light did not mean feeling safe.
The team’s answer was a node structure: bigger objects where people decide, small markers between them. I gave each node an object.
More light is the obvious answer to a dark path. In this park it is also the wrong one.
The team worked through what artificial light does to the wood’s night life, turned it into six rules, and tested every way of lighting the route against them. Here is the same evening, lit five ways.
No path light The route as it is: light on the museum and the car park, nothing between.
Where the route is now.
5 m columns every 22 m, cool white, on all night.
Ruled out by the team: severe light pollution and damage to the landscape.
0.9 m posts every 6 m, light all round, on all night.
Ruled out by the team: leftover light pollution, and it fails the low-intervention brief.
The same stones, every one lit all night. The team’s Plan A.
Plan A, not chosen: it breaks the time limit and loses the sense of being led.
Only the four or five stones ahead of someone walking. The team’s Plan B.
Plan B, chosen: 6 m apart, 4–5 lights per trigger, 90 s before fading.
From the team’s ecology research and the DarkSky principles for outdoor lighting: useful, targeted, low-level, controlled, warm-coloured. Renders: one Blender scene, only the path lighting changes.
We 3D-printed a stack of translucent stones with a light inside, then set small ones along the paths of a site model.
The stone tested form and brightness. The model asked a different question: does a sequence of markers read as a route? It did, and it showed that a cairn should not work alone. That is where the team’s Mother and Sub cairns came from.
Team prototype and site model, GSA 2026.
From here on, my own work
I redesigned the objects as one family: stacked stone, one warm line of light under the top stone, at three scales. The size tells you the job.
The team had ruled out low trail lights because they block the verge and throw light sideways. So the waymark is not a bollard with a cap. It stays a stack, and from the side you see glowing stone, not a lamp.
Every waymark is the same few parts, threaded on a spine. Scroll to take one apart.
Rotomoulded recycled HDPE with a stone-flecked skin, the material the team specified. Three moulds, turned and stacked differently, so no two cairns match.
The stones sit on a steel spine fixed to a ground anchor, so a passer-by cannot lift them off.
In the top stone: a battery, the controller and a low-power radio. When this stone wakes, the radio wakes the next four along the route.
A small presence sensor in the seam faces the way people arrive. Nobody presses anything; walking towards it is enough.
A warm LED ring under the pointer, aimed down. It lights the stones below and a small patch of path, not the air or the trees.
The narrow end of the top stone points along tonight’s route, with a pin of light under its tip so the direction still reads after dark.
One key unlocks the pointer, to turn it when the route changes or to lift out the sealed light and battery module beneath. No digging, no wiring on the path.
Stone-grey cells set flush in the pointer’s crown, about 0.025 m². In a Glasgow December that is about 1.2 Wh a day in the open, enough for a 0.2 W light and a winter mode, so no cable runs along the path.
Spacing, number and timing are the team’s proposal. Exploded view rendered from the product model.
The whole route as a white night model, like the one the team 3D-printed. Point at a moment and the stones around it light; choose one to walk into it.
Night model · rendered from the same scene 01 Leave
At the museum door, a chest-high signpost cairn names each way out and how long it takes on foot. The first stones are already awake.
02 Choose
At the fork, a second signpost. Its pointer stone is turned toward the route that is lit after dark. The other branch stays dark.
03 Follow
The next four or five waymarks wake as she comes, 6 m apart, and fade 90 seconds after she has passed. Nobody needs to search for the next one.
04 Wait
The Mother cairn at the shuttle stop: a seat and a lean rail out of the wind, a board with the next shuttle, and a lit outline you can see from the path.
05 Connect
The shuttle pulls in at the shelter’s open side, so the people waiting see it arrive. For anyone walking on, the lit route carries on past the stop.
The stones only help if someone keeps them true. Each moment has an owner, and a way to fail safely.
The museum, the shuttle operator and the park team share one route description: the panels, the board and the website all draw from it.
| Layer | 01 Leave | 02 Choose | 03 Follow | 04 Wait | 05 Connect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The visitor | Steps out of the museum and decides how to get home. | Reaches the fork and checks which way is lit tonight. | Walks between stones without searching for the next one. | Arrives at the shuttle stop and decides whether to wait. | Boards the shuttle, or walks on to Pollokshaws West. |
| What they see | A signpost cairn at the exit: three ways out and how long each takes. | A second signpost, and a pointer stone turned toward the after-dark route. | The next four or five waymarks light as she approaches, about 6 m apart, then fade after 90 seconds. | The Mother cairn: a sheltered seat out of the wind, and a board with the next shuttle and the walking times. | The shuttle stops at the shelter’s open side; the lit route continues beyond it. |
| Behind it | The museum updates closures and shuttle hours on the same panel artwork as its website. | The park team turns the pointer stone when the route changes, with one key, no digging. | Each stone reports its battery and sensor state; a monthly round checks the lenses and verge cut. | The shuttle operator feeds departure times to the board; the park team keeps the shelter clean and lit. | One timetable for the shuttle, the board and the museum website. |
| If it fails | If a route is closed, its line on the panel is covered, not left to be discovered on the path. | An unlit branch simply has no lit stones. Darkness is the signal not to go that way. | A dead stone leaves one gap of 12 m, not a dark route. The next stone still lights. | With no live feed, the board says so and gives the walking time instead of an empty screen. | If the last shuttle has gone, the board shows the lit walking route: 14 minutes to the station. |
Above the line, what the visitor meets. Below it, who keeps it working.
Everything here can be looked at; none of it has been walked. The renders settle the form and the light. They cannot say whether a tired visitor trusts four glowing stones.
