This Project was born as an urban sculpture contest for the Summit COP25, the UN climate change conference, that was originally programmed to be held in Chile during last December and was won by Fernando Prats, artist, in association with architecture studios ELTON LENIZ and CRUZ MANDIOLA who invited us to participate in the project.
Finally, because of the social movement that occurred in Chile on October 18th, the Chile government took the decision to cancel the COP25 Summit that was held in Madrid in December 2019. Happily as it was also an infrastructure for the Public Park Cerrillos, the Project was not cancelled and we worked on it until the end of November 19th.
The artwork is based on the observation of the Andes mountain, the poem of Gabriela Mistral “el poema de Chile” and the work of the geographer Pedro José Amado Pissis who draw during the 19th century the profile of the Andes Mountain in Chile between parallel 24th south and parallel 42th south.
The artist designed 16 iron columns which represent the Chilean Andes Mountain profile and distribute them on circular concrete surface surrounded by a water mirror and play in a symbolic way with the horizontality and the verticality of the Andes mountain.
Our approach was to try to magnify the artwork with light taking in consideration that in the context of the UN climate change conference our project had to be highly sustainable and had to respect biodiversity and dark skies, which are anyway common key issues for all our projects.
Our objectives were to underline in a sensible way the materiality and the details of the columns and to achieve an intimate ambience on the floor for the persons that would go down the artwork.
We decided to locate the fittings on the top of the columns and to project shadows of the columns/mountains details on the floor that will configure a grid of lights and shadows and an welcoming atmosphere.
At the same time we won’t emit any flux in the superior hemisphere.
We decided to use very small fittings that would be located on the top of the columns integrated in a custom designed iron box and that would disappear during night and day.
We choose 3W, 3 degrees beam, 3000K, IP67 fittings and place 3 fittings on each side of the columns.
The total electric consumption of the Project is approximately 320w, considering the 96 x 3W fittings = 288w +10% for power supply = 317w.
The total Budget for lighting fittings was £20.400 GBP.
