In Charlottenburg, close to Zoologischer Garten, on the opposite side of hotel Waldorf Astoria and just in front of Motel One on the Kantstrasse there’s a huge lighting pole made of high polished stainless steel… This cannot be only for lighting the street (also because there are already many other lighting poles around…), so I went to search for it.
Good news is that it is an art piece of Olaf Nicolai (German artist living and working in Berlin) and was inaugurated in May this year. It is about 16m tall, weighs 4 tons and is apparently the tallest gas lantern worldwide. What a pleasure to be able to see this everyday (and night, when it’s on!). The art piece is called “Lesser” and the name refers to impressionist painter Lesser Ury who was painting night-time urban landscape in the late 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
Nicolai won the competition for “Kunst am Bau” (art in buildings) in winter 2014. About this work, he says: “I understand my work, the lantern in its extreme magnification, on the one hand as a historical reference to this time. On the other hand, it also ironically refers to the musealizing tendencies that increasingly shape the current urbanistic concepts for the revitalization of European inner cities. “ (excerpt from Strabag)
This homage fits well in Berlin – the city has approx. 32.000 lighting poles which are run on gas. At the moment, these are slowly being replaced by LED technology. Some of them will still be left running on gas as conservation monuments.
If you are around that area, stop by to see this “huge gas lantern” and appreciate the impact this art piece has on its urban surroundings. Maybe you will get inspired like Lesser Ury a century ago.
The Lighting Tips 
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