Symphony of Winds
The wind is used as design material for the monumental object in the public space in front of the Montevideo Tower at the Wilhelminapier in Rotterdam. The proposed work of art named the Windmask uses the wind to find its from, it orchestrates the wind, its makes the wind become a player that creates the experience. The Windmask gives shape to the rules of the symphony of winds. The Windmask is for 50% solid mass, the other half permeable for the wind. Due to the many openings in the Windmask as seen from the critical prevailing South-Western winds the wind is fragmented into smaller pockets of wind with less force. If we would visualize the wind pockets the effect of the Windmask would be that the virtual spatial experience transforms from a solid state into a spongy state. The Windmask functions in the daily use of the public on the Wilhelminapier literally as a mask. The Windmask frames the view westbound towards the harbour and the Maas river, the sculpture is at night time activated by a dynamic series of LED lights at the tips of hundreds of carbon fiber antennas.
Design team: Ilona Lénárd, Kas Oosterhuis, André Houdart | commissioned by CBK Rotterdam | 2005