“Light+Building visitors and exhibitors from all over the world and people from the region enjoy the glamour of the illuminations, the hustle and bustle at the night-time venues and the new lighting ideas by architects, artists and designers,” so Bien.
It is the 6th time that Luminale will cast its spell on Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region. After the rapid growth of the early years, it has levelled off with around 170 events and thus ranks among Europe’s established and important architecture and design festivals.
During Luminale, everything in the region between Aschaffenburg and Mainz and Offenbach and Darmstadt revolves around lighting. The focal points are Frankfurt with around 100 lighting events and Offenbach with around 40. In Frankfurt, the Palmengarten botanical gardens will be the centre of attraction with installations by international lighting artists and projects by Offenbach University of Design.
The trend towards projections on buildings and interactive installations continues at Luminale 2012 with the digitalisation of light first presented at Luminale several years ago now having an ever greater impact. In the immediate vicinity of the Senckenberg Natural History Museum, visitors will be able to see and hear an expansive ambient light & sound installation (Philipp Geist), which is likely to be the visitor magnet of Luminale 2012. The media façades, the illuminations on Tower 185 and the Tishman Speyer construction site show the entire spectrum of creative options. Italian artist Fabrizio Corneli, will compose ephemeral image sculptures using only (day) light and shadows and no electronics in the Archaeological Museum.
With the installations typical of Luminale, artists and designers explore the potential of control equipment, sensors and software and thus test the technologies that enable the industry to develop energy-saving and highly efficient products. Artistic endeavour and industrial applications interact and provide mutual inspiration. Luminale acts as a lighting laboratory that also makes demands on the spectators.
The hopes of ‘green energy’ are pinned on OLEDs – organic LEDs. The Fraunhofer Institute has been awarded the 2011 German Future Prize, Germany’s leading award for tomorrow’s technology, for its OLEDs. The Fraunhofer scientists will be showing their pioneering innovations in the ‘Galerie’ of the Palmengarten botanical gardens.
Luminale is well on the way to being a green-city festival that promotes and opens exemplary buildings to the public. For example, the Energy Department of the City of Frankfurt will once again hold climate tours of Frankfurt, the passive house and green tower capital of Germany. Sustainability is also a key aspect of the work of Mainova@Luminale 2012 award winner Katharina Berndt who will permanently illuminate the co-generation power station in the Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse with her silhouette lighting.
Pictures: Messe Frankfurt Exhibition / Jochen Günther
