You will all be starting to think that we have misspelt our company name on the site, and that it is really Artchitectural Classics – or perhaps that we are on the payroll of the UK Centre for the Arts – with yet another post on architecture-related art.

Luminox in Oxford a couple of months ago is the subject. Like the Salt Mines in Poland, or the Ice hotel in Sweden complete with chandeliers, this post makes you wish you had been there… It was the creation of a French artist, Carabosse, and basically involved turning off all electric light to Oxford Square from around 7pm, and lighting the hundreds of firepots and fire-powered chandeliers that hung around the square.

The community got involved – hundreds of school kids from around the area helped make the firepots, which were recycled afterwards. However, the chandeliers were definitely not made by schoolchildren! They are gorgeously simple, and bruing together two very separate symbols and worlds. The primeval nature of fire meets with the elegance, civilization and modernity of the chandelier in an eerie yellow glow.

You can see how much light there is to see by – but imagining how much only one fire-powered chandelier, as they used to have in chapels in medieval times, you don’t envy them! Even with hundreds of flames around, it looks like walking around in a photographic darkroom – things are visible, but your eyes just feel as if they’ve landed on Mars. If there were just a single chandelier – two boards nailed together in the centre to make a cross, with a single candle on each arm, nonetheless, it would be much dimmer. Just the right light to go to sleep by, if it weren’t for the ht wax dripping off the edges!

Luminox must have been a beautifully ancient spectacle, and will probably only become rarer as health and safety regulations become harder to create for this sort of inherently dangerous event. Most of the people who have commented on it have mentioned that they would love to see it again next year … so keep an eye out for your next chance to see dozens of flame-filled chandeliers!

Photo credits: Sheldonian by Ed The Sock, Fire and Water by Al Power, Chandelier in the night’s sky by Hering Breuer, Ball of Fire by Simon Whitaker, Sheldonian Theatre by Sapientum

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