The Illuminated River

The Illuminated River is more than a lighting project for some of London’s key bridges, it is an opportunity to improve the wider public realm around the bridges, enhancing their links with the surrounding networks of streets to create a more pleasant, safer and walkable environment. One that will encourage the public to visit the river more often to enjoy and engage with the many activities around it.

Leo Villareal, the artist who created The Bay Lights (a monumental public art installation on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge), architects Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and curators Future\Pace present a transformational artwork, in three stages, designed to enliven the Thames using dynamic light. First, Villareal’s ambitious composition integrates light and colour on the 17 bridges, from Tower Bridge to Albert Bridge, creating a sensitive, interactive and site-specific interplay with the river. Second, a strategic scheme along both banks will control commercial lighting and introduce the setting for future cultural projects. Third, additional proposals include a ground-breaking partnership between the MBNA Thames Clippers and artists Random International, immersive installations by Japanese technologists teamLab and other opportunities that foster community and diversity.

The 17 bridges:

  1. Albert Bridge
  2. Chelsea Bridge
  3. Grosvenor Bridge
  4. Nine Elms Brigde (new footbridge)
  5. Vauxhall Bridge
  6. Lambeth Bridge
  7. Westminster Bridge
  8. Golden Jubilee bridges & Hungerford footbridge
  9. Waterloo Bridge
  10. Garden Bride (new footbridge)
  11. Blackfriars Bridge
  12. Blackfriars Railway Bridge
  13. London Millenium footbridge
  14. Southwark bridge
  15. Canonstreet rail Bridge
  16. London Bridge
  17. Tower Bridge

favicon-32x32 Website Illuminated River Project

The Eternal Story of the River Thames

The tides of the Thames, its depths and its currents, are a direct force of nature. They have been this way for hundreds of thousands of years. Ever since the construction of the city, London has been an attempt to move away from the natural forces that have defined the place. We want to reveal the river as a breathing, pulsing organism and so illuminate the age and the tides of this ancient estuary.

We want to illuminate the river walls as a constant thread of light through the city that gently illumines the expanses of foreshore exposed at low tide. When the tide is low, the underbellies of the bridges are revealed by lighting. At high tide, the lighting shifts to illuminate the elevations of the bridges. The river and its tidal changes remind us that our lives play out not in the urgent context of minutes or hours, but in the slower, deeper context of thousands of centuries. It feels a good time to illuminate exactly that.

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