Urban Art Gallery Constance is a project established in the Marktstätten-Unterführung (underpass) in September 2022. As Constance is a climate city as well as a live and touristic place, this motto for the Urban Art Gallery Constance 2022 has been chosen: “More pictures for climate protection”.
With the new ten permanent frames for the Urban Art Gallery, a non-place has been transformed into an art place. Passers-by can get into conversation with the artists, as well as with others and enjoy the gallery.
For the first installation in 2022 various artists came together for a project, formed new networks. With its redesign the Marktstätten-Unterführung, which had long been unsightly, is blossoming into an attractive public exhibition space that allows everyone to experience the art free of charge and without barriers in its creation process and later when completed as a urban gallery space. The art is created on modular panels mounted in the frames that are to be replaced regularly. The replaced art work is dismounted and can be archived or even sold.
The Urban Art Gallery in Constance serves as a pedestrian route through three underpasses connecting the historic city center with the waterfront. At the same time it has been turned into an exhibition space. Besides the open spaces with stairs, this quirky passage presents collections of large graffiti artworks along its way. The lighting techniques used here achieves a high even rendering of the artworks and at the same time meets the required pedestrian lighting. There is no additional functional lighting in the underpasses.
The evenly lit paintings (lit glare-free with very good colour rendering) present the spaces positively. This could be achieved by illuminating them from top to bottom with a flat light distribution using linear high power led wallgrazers integrated in the tops of the frames.
The indirect light reflected from graffiti art, on the other hand, ensures uniform and sufficient illumination of the circulation in all underpasses. All lighting equipment is powered from existing wall ducts.
A special frame detail was designed for the area in the underpasses to allow the reflected light to further softly underlight the ceiling to create a calm spatial atmosphere.
The functional light for the non-covered spaces without the art frames is planned as focussed mast lighting. The cut-off light distribution ensures the dark sky and a glare free spatial perception.
