Barcelona light festival gets 170,000 visitors at new venue

Barcelona’s festival of light, known as the Festival Llum BCN, was a huge success at the weekend, attracting 170,000 people to the event’s new venue in the Poblenou neighborhood. In previous years, the festival has taken place a week earlier in the Ciutat Vella district, but the change of date and venue did little to put people off visiting.  

This seventh edition of the festival, described as “the most ambitious yet” by the city’s culture department, not only included a change of venue, but twice as many displays were scheduled, with some 35 participants, including artists, companies and schools, presenting 47 different spectacular light shows that transformed the local surroundings.

The festival jury picked the 'Llacuna' project from the ELISAVA design and engineering school as the winning display, for its “use of light and illumination and its capacity to offer a new urban experience to the public.” The jury also made special mention of the '15.000 grams' project by the UPC’s ETSAB school of architecture, which it described as “original” and “innovative.”

Other displays that attracted a lot of public attention included ‘Hexx‘, a clock made up of 12 hexagonal arcs in the Glòries Catalanes square, or ‘Civilization‘, a moving mural representing hell with the use of light and color from the Museu del Disseny. Meanwhile, the guest of honor at this year’s festival was the internationally-recognised Québécois designer and founder of the Societé des Arts Technologiques (SAT) in Montreal.