Frozen Trees is a temporary installation for Christmas lighting in D. Pedro IV square in Lisbon. It builds an illuminated, frozen and fractal Christmas landscape that affects and alters the path of passers by.
Thirty cylinders – structured, self-sufficient streetlights – are placed throughout the square, drawing a new landscape and context and inviting the visitors to new spatial experiences.
Designed from the creative association of IKEA plastic bag dispensers ‘Rationell Variera’ by K. Hagberg/M. Hagberg, and taking advantage from its shape, Frozen Trees brings a domestic object to the scale of the town – thus dissociating it from its original function and leading to the loss of its identity as a single element, calling to the importance of creativity in the socio-economic conjecture of this period.
The volumes, made of multiple holes, are visually trespassed and define an ethereal presence in the square. The installation takes simultaneously advantage from the holes of the original object and from the translucent properties of its material – polypropylene plastic -, simultaneously flexible, non-inflammable and highly absorbent and potentiating the transmittance of light, either natural or artificial. Integrated with the urban surrounding, Frozen Trees presents different characteristics during the day and night: by day, the trees make surprising shadows and the ensemble makes an abstract, white and tracery landscape, through which is possible to see the surrounding; by night, illuminated from inside by LEDs, the elements, as street lamps, explode with white light, creating a Christmas ambience with variable intensity.
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