Ceiling Lights Defeat Unwanted Development

#25. Ceiling Lights Defeat Unwanted Development

© Recetas Urbanas

Construction site
Electricity

Project with Lights was a strategy for catalyzing community interest in a piece of land that had been approved for development without much consultation. Fourteen neighbours and friends wore backpacks fitted with two 40-watt fluorescent bulbs. Members of the group were attached to each other by a long extension cord; moving the group necessitated finding new sources of energy, so neighbours were invited to donate minutes of energy for the twenty-eight lights, involving them in the discussion around the event.
The group “traced” four different development proposals by standing in representative formations, illuminating the plans at 1:1 scale for the neighbourhood.
Santiago Cirugeda is an architect based in Seville who has proposed semi-legal strategies for housing and urban renovation under the name Recetas Urbanas, or “urban prescriptions,” since 1996. He inhabits gaps between laws, exploiting overlap and oversight to practice autonomous architecture.

Actors:

Recetas Urbanas (Santiago Cirugeda); fourteen friends

Location: San Bernardo, Seville, Spain, 1996

Tools: Twenty-eight 40-watt fluorescent bulbs, backpack straps, long electrical cord

Walking

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