‘Smart Light’ is now a widely known term for the digital technologies and ecological ideas that are being creatively applied by designers to transform cities at night. This historic creative movement includes several revolutionary genres of dynamic public art, globally televised with the Smart Light festivals founded in Sydney (2009) and Singapore (2010).
SuperLux is the world’s first comprehensive monograph surveying recent smart light milestones and triumphs, using eco-ethical ideas and electroluminescent (efficient digital) systems for urban art, architecture and environmental design. The book contains more than 400 images of post-2008 examples of energy-effective light installations – illuminated buildings, bridges, streets, parks, plazas, media walls, public interiors, gallery spaces and water features, including interactions, videos screened across historic building facades and augmented reality games using mobile devices. There is also an illustrated timeline of historical achievements with luminous structures – using paint, perforations, projections and pixel screens.
More than fifty public artworks, design installations and architectural-scale projects are presented in three main sections:
- Animating buildings and architecture through illumination, media screens and projections
- Bringing light to former industrial zones and new public areas, including wayfinding and streets
- Interactive installations in urban spaces and public interiors.
Punctuating the pictorial sections are nine ‘genre summaries’ by editor Davina Jackson; informative essays by European designer-scholars Mary-Anne Kyriakou, Vesna Petresin, Thomas Schielke and Peter Weibel; and an ecological critique by renewable energy expert, Peter Droege.
Reviews
Charts how buildings have been transformed from inefficient, light-polluting beacons to clean, high-concept aesthetic assets to urban space.
City AM
Celebrates the ingenuity and artistry of the emergent ‘smart light’ movement.
Architecture Today
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Thames & Hudson
Explore more at the SuperLux website about the exhibtion and events.