For yet another year, students from the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture will be involved in a project submitted as part of the Llum BCN festival. The event, organised by the Barcelona City Council, will take place on 16, 17 and 18 February. With the eighth edition, the festival will have a change of scenery. It will leave behind the Old Quarter’s streets and courtyards and light up the district of Poblenou, “a neighbourhood”, according to the festival organisers, “with an industrial legacy that has undergone an intense process of transformation and become the district for technology, innovation and creation”.

With this initiative, held at the same time as the city’s winter festivities, the Barcelona City Council aims to bathe the city in light with lights shows and creations by renowned artists, as well as collaborations with 150 students from a dozen architecture and design schools in Barcelona, including the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture.

This year, eight students from the School have taken part in the initiative with a project entitled “Llums silvestres” [Wild Lights], which will be set up at number 83, Carrer de Tànger. The project interprets and lends value to the plant life that grows wild in the abandoned or half-built lots of Poblenou’s island blocks. Green areas that seem haphazard compared to the district’s current process of transformation. “Luces silvestres” imitates this chaotic vegetation using balls of light that “grow” forming wild contours. “In terms of assembly, we used metal rods, screws and plastic balls measuring 10 cm in diameter. We spray-painted the plastic balls blue and, together with the rods, used them to create a labyrinth with different heights and positions. The process consisted of cutting the rods, painting and setting the balls. Altogether there are 1,500 balls, 1,500 metal rods and 3,000 screws”, explains one of the students who participate in the project.

This luminous garden will be accompanied by music in sync with the rhythm of nature. The project was supervised by Iñaki Baquero, Maria Barcina, Roser Estelrich and Marta García-Orte.

This year, Llum BCN Poblenou has invited Monique Savoie, a video artist and creator from Quebec, who is also the founder of the prestigious Society for Arts and Technology of Montreal (SAT), to participate as guest artist. The SAT is a trailblazing foundation in art and new technologies and will bring to Barcelona a selection of the best immersive 360º videos.

The Barcelona City Council has also emphasised the fact that this edition will showcase twice the number of shows and art installations. As in previous years, the festival will underscore its commitment to the innovative means of working with light and space employed by, among others, students from the School of Architecture. To do so, the organisers of this edition will hand out an award for best student collaboration, which will be decided by a jury made up of a number of exhibiting artists.