Words To Light – lucioles [fireflies]

Project Description

An architectural response: Thanks to light, natural as well as artificial, words are restored and given back to those who need them most. The light becomes words, bearer of the message. During the process, the sun rays passes through an opening of the tent, reach the surface of a mirror, which in turn reflects the sunlight onto the surface of the tent. The tent acts as a screen; a screen to communicate. To communicate with the passersby, to communicate to the city. Socio-cultural context: Based on the data collected by "La Strada", the main support for the Brussels’ homeless, the number of homeless people or badly housed people in the Brussels-Capital Region has more than doubled in 10 years, reaching a number of 4,175 in 2018, and more than 50,000 in the whole Belgian territory. How to be part of society when you are rejected, without papers, money or roof? The weakest, victims of a non-egalitarian system, end up far from sight becoming, day after day, more and more invisible. It is necessary to bring the homeless people back to society, allowing them to express who they are, with their name, their story, their knowledge, their sensibility, their course of life. In order to highlight those whom we never look at and to give a voice to those whom we don’t listen at, our proposal aims to give these people a voice by light. This will create an interaction in the public space, allowing people from different background to meet and share. To live together and live in solidarity, we must enhance exchanges and engage in solidarity to create a bond between all. Ephemeral Fireflies (poetic introduction): Society is a great bright web, where people compose the meshes. And so do the individuals, as fireflies composing the whole. The web is a complex textile, rich in diversity, that shines with its countless nuances. To take care of the society and to live together are the guarantee of the protective mesh, of the solidarity mesh. And it is therefore necessary to weave lights on this large canvas. Like fireflies, small bright lights flash in the shade of bright cities. In the cold and silent darkness, with the fabric of a tent as only protection, fireflies are seeking their way. They wander lonely trying to keep their lights to life while meeting on the public space. All of them live and gather on streets, places or squares, with their own story. They are driven by reasons that we do not know. but no matter why or how, they are human.