reinhabiting a street, by Beforelight

Communal lighting installation from donated fixtures

Beforelight studio

Athens, Greece, 2010

Located in the heart of Athens, Ittaki is a small street in Monastiraki area, one of the most characteristic quarters with narrow and winding lanes and small buildings that date back to Byzantine and Ottoman period. This street hosts only a few small shops, very few residents and an amazing lighting installation.

Beforelight, a Greek based creative Studio that experiment with the use of light, in collaboration with Imagine the city, a cluster for city branding and urban renovation, has invited and mobilized the residents to donate their old luminaires, fixtures and lamp shades in order to transform the abandoned street of old central Athens into a homely space, with the site-specific installation "Synoikia", that means neighborhood.



An abandoned shop was temporarily transformed into an open workspace for people to gather, observe and participate in the development of the project. 

A process of repairing, testing and waterproofing the lamps engaged volunteers that, in collaboration with greek creative studio Beforelight, prepared more then 150 lamps to create a colorful ceiling over the street, in an effort to encourage the public collective experience with artificial light.
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(via designboom and sustainablediary.blogspot.com)