Revolving Beacon
2008
Dimensions variable.
Profiler lights, light control unit.
A strong and rotating light is placed inside Stockholm City Library’s rotunda. The light beacon beams out through the library windows and sweeps over the rooftops of centre Stockholm.
The central structure of Gunnar Asplund's famous Stockholm City Library is a rotunda, placed on a boxy plinth, containing the actual library. The library and its cylindrical rotunda towers over the Norrmalm neighbourhood. As a temporary performative installation Hellberg is turning this landmark library building into a lighthouse placing a strong and rotating light inside the rotunda. Lying close to Asplund’s idea where light from within the building should show its activity Hellberg gives the whole building a different behaviour. The building itself is turned into a visual debate argument, pointing out its existence, in times when the town as well as the library is going through a new development phase – a lighthouse at the end of the world.
