Bourrasque by Paul Cocksedge

“A ream of paper scatters in a gust of wind, soaring high into the black winter night, every sheet glowing bright, against a backdrop of the most exquisite 17th century architecture.
The site is the grand courtyard of Lyon’s Hotel de Ville, and the occasion is the city’s annual Festival of Light, a winter tradition drawing thousands of visitors to its festive attractions.

In his installation “Bourrasque”, designer Paul Cocksedge has combined his interest in the nature and morphology of paper with a subject that has long been an important element of his design work: light…”

“In both scale and technique, this is an ambitious project. “Bourrasque” measures 25 metres in length and reaches over 15 metres at its highest point. The 200 A3-sized sheets are made from electroluminescent (EL) material, a technology which has recently advanced rapidly to produce a range of sophisticated colour temperatures, in thin and extremely flexible sheets. Each of these double-sided sheets has been individually moulded by hand in London, and then assembled on site in a structure of extraordinary finesse and detail barely visible to the human eye.”

Paul Cocksedge explains: “I’ve been fascinated for a long time by the various properties of light: how it emanates, how it diffuses, bends, reflects, and scatters. With these EL sheets I’ve been able to explore much further the idea of light as a flat object, as something touchable and malleable – not housed in a glass bulb or a neon strip, but an object you can bend and twist – and almost see it come alive in your hands…”

Via Luminous Mushroom.
Photos&Text via Paul Cocksedge Studio.