Outdoor museum of light

Berge 2000, Grenoble, France

Grenoble, near the convergence of the Drac and Isère rivers in a mountainous region of south-east France, is the capital of the French Alps. But the mayor saw this famous city as “a jewel case without a pearl”. Gaz Electricité Grenoble, the local operator in charge of the public lighting, therefore developed an ambitious project that marries gigantic scales and frailty, poetry and technological innovations.

The Berge 2000, created by Laboratoire Sculpture-Urbaine, is to be found along the bank of the river where this flows through the centre of the town. The idea of plastic artist Philippe Mouillon, instigator of the project, was to make use of the 600-m-long retaining wall of the quay built in 1850 to narrate something from the domain of fresco and to create order. Fragile, impalpable images made up of shadows and lights are cast on the wall above the footpath, where they seem to drift along the river, like a huge frieze framing the town.

The Berge 2000 project is to be found along the bank of the river where this flows through the centre of the town.

© Martin Stahl

The Lighting

The twenty-seven images, each with a diameter of 3.5 m, are spaced 25 m apart along the wall, just above head height. Each image is produced by a fibre optics lighting system mounted on the wall above. The system comprises a waterproof 100 W Focus generator (total installed load 3.78 kW), and a length of fibre optics cable supported on a 2.5-m-long bracket, with the waterproof (IP54) projector termination at its end aimed at the wall.

The optical system is designed to obtain a sharp image on the wall in spite of the anamorphic distortion caused by the angle of projection of 35 degrees to the perpendicular. This has been done by calculating the distortion using a computer, then engraving the corrected image on the glass slide used in the projector, like pattern filters or gobos in stage lighting.

The discharge lamp used in the projector has a correlated colour temperature of 8500 K. The colour is extremely stable during lamp life and creates a pleasant contrast against the street lighting of 2000 K.

The first sixteen artists, from Egypt, USA, Brazil and Japan, inspired by the cultures of their countries, will be exhibiting their work until October 2000, which can be viewed at weekends and on public holidays between nightfall and 00.30. Other works will follow in their place during the time of the Olympic Games of Sydney 2000. Then works from other artists will take their place for a further six months. And so a unique heritage of contemporary works will be built up through the coming years. ■

Author: Vincent Laganier

Project team

Commissioner: Jean-Paul Giraud, Gaz Electricité de Grenoble (GEG)

Exhibition designer: Philippe Mouillon, Laboratoire Sculpture-Urbaine

Technical support: Eric Bertot, Hervé Humez, Louis Montagne, Rémi Noirot, Fabienne Petitgas, Philips Lighting

Installation of the fibre-optics projectors.

© GEG – Grenoble, lucy in de Sky