LichtSchmelzen

ABOUT

Columns of melting ice – the thaw of icicles in the spring: these are the images that are brought to mind by the twin fascinations of the sight of water moving through cylinders of glass, and the restful sound of dripping water.

This is a design proposal for a water feature in a public space in Bayreuth, a town in southern Germany associated mainly with the music of Richard Wagner. In collaboration with artist Tim Morgan, the project is based on his work with water and glass tubes over many years, while it incorporates glass tube laminating techniques that were pioneered on the Glass Tube Field designed by C|L in 1998.

The basic arrangement places a narrow tube of glass within a larger laminated tube. Water is pumped gently up the outer tube to then overflow into the inner, where the ripples of the water running down within are magnified by the outer cylinder of water. The tubes are arranged vertically around an elliptical space and incorporate various-sized reverberation chambers within the base of each tube to capture the sound of dropping water. The taller tubes form space, with seating incorporated into the base of the tubes, while lower tubes form an area for children to play with the water that is allowed, in this case, to overflow onto a shallow “wet area“.