he Blast Furnace Nº1 in Sestao, built in 1959, is one of the most important monuments of Industrial Heritage in Spain, declared a Cultural Asset in the Monument category, and a reference of the activity of the Iron Industry in Spain during a large part of the 20th century. Since its closure in 1995, it has been a silent witness to the transformation experienced in the Great Bilbao Area from the splendour of the Iron Industry to the present day.
The permanent artistic lighting project is based on the objective of not only enhancing the value of the architecture of the Monument, but also of connecting its past, its memory and its legacy in an emotional way with the citizens. A large part of the population on the left bank of the Bilbao estuary has or has had family members working in the Blast Furnace and in the company Altos Hornos de Vizcaya, the main company in Spain during the iron industry. We have designed an artistic light and sound installation that evokes the activity of the Blast Furnace, the extraction of materials in the mines, the transformation of iron into pig iron, the activity of the factories, the struggle of the workers in the years of crisis or the impact that its activity had on a social and cultural level in society.
We chose to work with dramatic lighting, which allows us to highlight both the materials eroded by the time, like an aged skin, as well as to seek a play of light and shadow in the complex structure of the Blast Furnace, always avoiding the visualisation of the light source, and playing with the 80-metre high structure, its walkways, the cookers and the rest of the elements that make up the great Blast Furnace.
Bringing the Blast Furnace back to its activity has been one of the premises of the project, on which we have worked with a range of colours reminiscent of the industrial landscape of the 1980s and the temperatures reached inside the Furnace. The visual rhythms of the different lighting scenes, synchronised with a striking soundscape, allow us to create a sensorial and artistic experience of great visual and auditory impact. An experience that can only be understood in an immersive way at the feet of the Blast Furnace.
The complexity of the project lay in avoiding mainly architectural lighting, in order to offer a sensorial, emotional and artistic experience to the visitor in the field of architectural lighting. The fact that it is considered Industrial Heritage has forced us to respect the limitations of physical intervention on the monument itself, which in turn has allowed us to work on organic lighting from a distance, playing with the different spaces and elements of the Blast Furnace through the play of lights and shadows.
The light and sound installation aims to turn the Blast Furnace into a reference point for a thriving innovative cultural tourism on the left bank of the Great Bilbao Area.
