This article was taken from the April 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This 28-metre-tall wooden colonnade studded with 55,000 LED lights illuminated Belfortstraat in Ghent, Belgium, at the city's light festival this January. Built by Italian architectural lighting firm Luminarie de Cagna, the Renaissance-style "cathedral" uses LEDs strung together in sheets. "It took six months to create, and seven days to mount it at Ghent," says architect Giuseppe de Cagna. Using LEDs also spared the city's power grid from blowing a fuse -- the colonnade consumed a frugal 20kWh, and some other displays were energy neutral.
The colonnade is 28m tall, but it's not Luminarie de Cagna's tallest work. In 2000 the firm installed 352 lights on the Eiffel Tower that make it appear to sparkle each evening, every hour, on the hour.
Now that's switched-on thinking.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
