Christmas Lights
Published on: 31st of December 2011
Current city: Lisbon
Every trip changes you a little bit and I think this one was no exception. Travelling for three months and seeing so many diverse things has changed me. I´m not sure exactly how but I definitely feel different and see things in another way. Sure I had missed home, but part of me got addicted to travel. I guess once you started it´s hard to stop.
Returning back home and stopping travelling was a great shock for me. I started having the blues. On the first days I was back I dreamt that I was about to miss flights! And lying on my bed I would wake up in the middle of the night wanting to check my itinerary and my next destination to realize that I was already back home.
I recognized the only cure for this was to keep on travelling, so I decided to continue my light journey through my own country. Not only is where I take most of my inspiration from but also by this time I wanted to know a bit more of what Portuguese think about light.
It is worldwide known that at the moment Portugal is not really going through the best phase, nevertheless I always heard critical times are usually the most creative periods in history. Christmas time this year brought new challenges on how to balance low and strict budgets for families and the cities. So in this context, the Lisbon City Hall decided to tackle this challenge by investing in creativity and inviting a group of designers, artists and architects to design the 2011´s Christmas decorations as a way to reduce costs whilst make something interesting for everyone.
The results were really diverse: an umbrella sculpture, road signs at a roundabout, a lit tree in a garden, a star constellation in a square, light tubes made of recyclable materials, ‘human Xmas lights’ and a different Xmas tree. Overall the initiative has been so successful that it has been already announced that 2012 will have again ´creative´ Christmas decorations.
I had the opportunity to speak to two of the architectural practices that were selected that have designed two of the installations: ADOC and Pedro Campos Costa.
ADOC designed a lighting installation in one of the most famous streets in the historic centre called Rua Augusta. The street has become pedestrian some time ago and the arch at the end of it is one of the main symbols of the city. Architect Duarte Ferreira from ADOC explained that for this lighting installation they decided to use a Xmas icon – a tree – that could be more sculptural than the traditional Xmas trees.
The result was a deconstructed tree as he calls but that can be turn into a piece of urban furniture just by changing its orientation and position. In addition, the concept was to be recognizable by the general public of all ages and as Duarte confessed it turn out to be more popular than they expected. The children love it, usually hide and seek or play with toys along the trees; tourists and families are often seen taking pictures in between the elements and passer bys don´t become indifferent to the installation either.
As for Pedro Campos Costa, the architect proposed a different perspective on Christmas lights, he decided to make them ‘human’. I spend one evening with Pedro and followed him on this mission. When I met him at Largo de Camões, a quite well known meeting point for the night party goers, he was giving away blinking LED coloured lights. The idea was that each person would ´wear´ this light and from a distance you could actually see moving and blinking Xmas lights in the square. Not only that but these human lights were able to interact with each other, move around the city (I found blinking lights two hours later drinking in another part of town) and engage the community.
Pedro confessed that he was so pleased and realized the personal contact with people was much more interesting than he imagined that he decided to give away the lights himself. I was with him almost two hours and from children to old people and tourists, most of them stopped and got interested in the project, leaving with a smile on their faces and a blinking light. For those hours the whole community got so involved that even the firemen brought a ladder to help putting some flashing lights in the statues too.
With ADOC and Pedro Campos Costa installations I recognized how much people love light and how simple interventions can have such an impact on the community. The human side and the interaction was definitely much more fascinating and inspiring than anyone had hoped! After all, it makes you wonder what a simple [blinking] light can do!
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