A winter installation of 30 giant seesaws in Montreal

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Impulse, a winter installation comprising 30 giant seesaws that will transform the Place des Festivals into a vast illuminated playground, accompanied by a set of all-new video projections. The creation is the work of Toronto-based firm Lateral Office and Montreal-basedCS Design, in collaboration with EGP Group of Montreal.

The consortium, chosen through an open competition for the sixth annual Luminothérapie event, has created a playful interactive space that will warm hearts of all ages during the cold season. The video below shows the process of building and testing the seesaws.

“Every year, we are eager to give Montrealers a new creative winter experience in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles. Luminothérapie’s public installations transform our relationship with the city, beautify it, and give it a wonderful friendly touch. Luminothérapie also keeps Montreal shining bright around the world as a hub of interactive art,” said Chantal Rossi, Ville de Montréal Associate Councillor Culture, Heritage and Design.

IMPULSE

The interactive work on the Place des Festivals presents a series of giant illuminated and sound-producing seesaws. To activate them, visitors straddle them like any other seesaw. Once in motion, the built-in lights and speakers produce a harmonious sequence of sounds and lights, resulting in a constantly evolving ephemeral composition.

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Through the use of architectural lines, a hypnotic soundtrack and an entertaining illusion of depth, the nine architectural video projections echo the seesaws of the Place des Festivals. Playing with the notions of balance and unbalance, symmetry and asymmetry, tension and harmony, the video projections are visual experiments illustrating the original soundtrack created for each video.

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Impulse is an urban installation that renews itself for every different audience. Each person becomes, while on the seesaws, the player of a novel instrument.

Montrealers and visitors are invited, from December 10 to January 31, to explore Impulse.

Image Credit | Ulysse Lemerise / OSA

About Damian Holmes 3245 Articles
Damian Holmes is the Founder and Editor of World Landscape Architecture (WLA). He is a registered landscape architect (AILA) working in international design practice in Australia. Damian founded WLA in 2007 to provide a website for landscape architects written by landscape architects. Connect on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/damianholmes/