The centre of the centre of the centre of the Salone is symbolically represented by an installation, metaphor for the city and energy, smack bang in the middle of Piazza Gae Aulenti and conceived by Edison and Boeri, the architect behind the Vertical Forest.
“LighthengeLighthenge platform becomes a welcoming satellite, beaming its rays of light into the sky.”
The installation is part of what makes the new Porta Nuova neighbourhood iconic, engaged in a coherent dialogue between the skyscrapers around Piazza Gae Aulenti. The project is formed of a solid base and an immaterial projection with a soundscape during the day. The base is a circular platform, 8 metres in diameter, covered with a dense forest of Styrofoam cones ranging from 40 to 350 cm and arranged in height order. Visitors can pause here, sit down and take a break. The second part of the project is a light display emitted every evening from the tip of each cone. Diffused light emerges from the shorter elements while the tallest throw beams of light so far into the sky that they might even reach distant civilisations (or perhaps a bright future for humanity). It is almost a more domestic and everyday version of the great Tribute in Light, which has brightened the sky of New York every 9/11 for 16 years now.
Rather than a form of art, then, Lighthenge is a mini urban metaphor, a small abstract preview of the future city that focuses our attention on the flows that we interact with on a daily basis, as well as an unexpected setting for personal moments of stasis: those occasional moments when we turn our gaze to the sky.