When in London, you cannot miss the Thames. From walks along its banks, to dinner cruises, the river has a pride of place in England’s largest city. Many paintings have immortalised its beauty and countless scholars have written about its accounts. The river that sustains life in London has recently been transformed into an art installation spot thanks to the Illuminated River Project.
The project is set to light up central London’s bridges along the Thames, as part of the longest public art lighting installation in the world. The idea is to create a colossal open-air public art installation that lends an attractiveness to the city’s nightscape. With an investment of £45 million, the following years will see 15 other bridges brought under this grand formation. By 2022, the project—that is free for all—will be complete.
At the recently lit Millennium Bridge, even as sundowner cruises sail under the starry sky, the Thames glows. LED lights with a focus on energy efficiency have been affixed as part of the first phase. Three other bridges, namely Southwark, London, and Cannon Street Bridge, have been covered in the first phase. The lights will be switched off at 2 am BST to further reduce energy consumption and costs. The beam angles have been measured precisely to distribute light in a way that it doesn’t affect marine or wildlife.
American artist Leo Villareal, known for his LED lights and encoded computer programming art layouts, was invited to undertake this project. Delivered by the Illuminated River Foundation, this is a monumental piece of public art that required a lot of sensitivity on Villareal’s part. He considers it his responsibility to make art accessible to the public and this project achieves that. The undertaking is classically inspired. Villareal seeks inspiration from French artist Claude Monet’s paintings, besides those of JMW Turner and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
At the heart of it lies the need for understanding the personality of this ancient river and all the bridges that embellish it. Villareal worked on each of the bridges individually with close to 10,000 lights being installed on every bridge. He then connected all four to form a visual cohesion. In the next phase starting Autumn of 2020, Blackfriars Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, Golden Jubilee Bridges, Westminster Bridge, and Lambeth Bridge will be illuminated.
Subsequently, the remaining bridges—Albert, Chelsea, Grosvenor Railway, Vauxhall, Blackfriars Railway and Tower Bridge—will be made part of the project. According to official estimates, approximately over one billion viewers would have witnessed this spectacle by 2022.
Alex Lifschutz, founding principal, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, has worked in close association with Villareal to achieve this 8.3km illumination of the Thames. Together they’re ushering in a magnificent era for the Thames.