2024 - SunLeaf, illuminating another sky

With the rapid development of the city, the quality of life improves, the number of cars owned by people surges, the original ground transportation becomes more and more congested, land space becomes more and more precious, and the city has to develop underground and above ground. Three-dimensional transportation systems, such as viaducts, are thus created to ease traffic pressure.
In Beijing, for example, the length of bridges increased from 165.380 km to 587.917 km between 2005 and 2016. The area of space under the bridges also went from about 32 square kilometers to about 120 square kilometers. At the same time it brings a series of problems, such as the space under these bridges often being neglected and gradually becoming negative space due to lack of involvement. At present, domestic cities have little effective use of the space under the viaducts, and there are problems such as depressing spaces under the bridges, insufficient light intensity, monotonous and boring forms, unattractive designs under the bridges, and lack of resident involvement. The sky above the heads of pedestrians on the ground is gradually replaced by cold, monotonous concrete. Instead of the blue sky, people are surrounded by the gray concrete world. The blazing sun that used to hang in the blue sky has been replaced by artificial light from tin boxes. The original warm and colorful nature is gradually fading and losing its warmth in the boring concrete world.
Light can bring temperature, light can also bring color. It is because of light that we have a colorful world today. Our group is focusing on bringing the sky back under the bridges and bringing daylight back to these spaces. In this way, we can restore warmth to these negative spaces and stimulate the vitality they might otherwise have, enriching the details of the city and enhancing its livability.
Therefore, we designed an installation that utilizes daylight and directs it to illuminate the space underneath the bridges. This device can be used in different scenarios by replacing simple components to better correspond to the activities in the space under the bridges, thus achieving better adaptability and versatility.