As of tomorrow morning, Londoners passing through the new King’s Cross pedestrian tunnel, which connects the recently renovated northern side of the station to the London Underground, will have an undeniably brighter commute, thanks to a new lighting installation by the design practice Speirs + Major.
Halflife will play out on the 295-foot glazed wall that runs the length of the tunnel, with some 180 light sources engaging commuters on their 50-second journey from one end to the other. Moving from light to dark, bold to calm, and then vice versa, the digital light show begins as a wall-long display that then reduces in halves, until only a sole light is left in the middle of the wall, before the surface randomly repopulates and the pattern starts again. Upon launch, all of the lights will be white, but with time they will become increasingly saturated, cycling through some 92,160 distinct shades over the course of a three- to four-month period.
“We didn’t want it to be visual elevator music—we wanted to do something quite bold that really changed the space,” says Keith Bradshaw, principal of Speirs + Major and lead designer of the installation. “Our day job is all about seeing how light can transform and improve architecture, so it’s very much about the entire experience of the tunnel, the reflections of the light, the way it behaves across the ceiling, the way it shortens and elongates the space. We were fully aware that we were dealing with a transient public rather than a static audience, so we wanted to offer commuters something that is constantly evolving. Every time they pass through the tunnel, they will take away a different experience, before they move on to the rest of their day.”
Halflife launches March 6 and runs 6:30 A.M. to 8:30 P.M. daily; speirsandmajorom
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