Starry Night: Sixty-Nine Seventy, Utah

Introduction

Sixty-Nine Seventy, a design competition organized out of Salt Lake City, Utah, invited design teams from around the world to re-envision the circulation areas and passages of two blocks (69 and 70) in the city’s downtown area.

Project Summary

In our design, we embedded intricate laces of tiny lights into the existing infrastructure, hanging them above the city streets like a bright, sparkling blanket across the sky. We would use interactive lace that responds to movements and sounds, so when people, trams or vehicles pass by, the billowing lace and embedded lights will illuminate together, twinkling in the sky and flooding the ground with a wash of light. For the alleyways, we fixed lights to the walls that would trace bodies of pedestrians and brighten up dark passages, while placing colorful lights at the crossways and the Plat of Zion to illuminate the ground. In our minds, Starry Night is a stage, encompassing blocks 69 and 70, where the performance of art, dance and music can come alive.

Our Role

Even though no one has realized our design concept (yet!), our goal was to showcase Nadi Group team’s commitment to place-making in the public realm.