Transient Light

Public Installation Design + Construction


This project was a response to the 2022 Furnishing Utopia Public Access brief:

Inspired by the Shaker legacy, Public Access challenges designers to focus on one Shaker value that resonates yet is sadly under-represented today: Sharing. Designers are invited to imagine and install a built installation for a public space in their own community that prompts an act of sharing, giving, or caring.

Light provided the Shakers with structure to each day, gave life to their crops, and represented a divine connection between earth and worlds beyond.

Transient Light uses existing public infrastructure-urban bus stops-to create daily moments of reflection and wonder. Daily commutes are often routine—the same bus at the same time. We reframe and re-imagine a familiar space by adding custom lenses to a bus stop. As seasons change and weather patterns shift, the light inside the bus stop will shift and change as well. Bus stops are places of refuge from weather, and this one will change with the weather, creating new sensory experiences from within. The light, bent and borrowed, encourages presence and appreciation, a shared moment for those waiting and for those walking by. It transforms a familiar, unremarkable space into something unexpected and ethereal.

To the Shakers, light was everything—fuel to the body, mind, and spirit.