Twenty years of light on one small river

Lights in Alingsås is a festival that draws more than 80,000 visitors a year to a small Swedish city to see temporary installations made by students under international lighting designers¹. Twenty years after the first one, Kai Piippo of Light Bureau and Torbjörn Eliasson of White Arkitekter, supporters since the start, came back to give the city something permanent¹.

With their colleagues Seren Dincel and Helena Johansson, they redesigned the area around the Lillå, the river through the town centre, to make it safer and more inviting¹. Polished steel poles along both banks carry the luminaires and reflect the trees and water, so the installation blends into its setting¹.

Local primary-school children added their own layer: lanterns made from painted milk bottles, hung above the river¹.

From the project

On the small wooden bridge, pairs of projectors on each pillar pick out its vertical lines with narrow 10° optics and a cool 5000K light chosen to bring out the white of the wood¹. It is one of only two cool choices among the projects in this issue that publish a colour temperature; see the chart in Chapter 6.

The projectors are small enough to disappear into their setting, and like the poles they are made of 316L stainless steel, rated to sit in water¹.