Mobile lighthouse Paris | Arhitektura Jure Kotnik

Mobile lighthouse was designed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Paris port and to bring closer its activities to a broader audience. Port is not a thing that most people would associate when mentioning Paris but with its 20 million tons of cargo and 7 million people transported by water Paris port is the biggest inland port in France and second biggest in Europe and one of the aims of this lighthouse was a promotion of the fluvial transport as an environmental sustainable type of transport. Yearly transport on the rivers conducted by Paris port means one million fewer trucks on the roads and doing so, 200 000 tones CO2 are saved. Container mobile lighthouse was, also symbolically, illuminating those facts, enlightening the visitors and surroundings of five different port locations along the rivers Seine and Marne (Ports of Evry, Limay, Paris, Gennevilliers and Bonneuil-sur-Marne) for a period of three months.

The design of the mobile lighthouse connects two basic port elements, a traditional lighthouse and containers. Lighthouses are one of most notable symbols of nautical transport and can be found in all traditional ports. Containers on the other hand are the symbol of the modern ports being one of the main transport elements, but also at the same time they are a perfect material to construct event architecture. They are accessible, they allow mobility and are easy to be constructed and re-set again on some other location. Four recycled 20-foot container are forming this 10 meters high Lighthouse. Top container has two rotating beam headlights, while the ground floor container hosts an information office/gallery promoting port activities in the Paris region and river transport as an alternative to road transport.