The vertical light columns are inspired by the street canyons of New York, where parallel streets form dense corridors of movement, energy, and constant flux.
At night, the city becomes a choreography of light. Red brake lights, white headlights, reflections on glass facades, signals, and passing bodies merge into layered streams of color. Noise, motion, and atmosphere intertwine, forming a continuous urban pulse.
The stacked color segments translate this dynamic into a vertical composition. Each band captures a moment in time: a passing car, a pause, acceleration, a crossing, a reflection. What is typically experienced horizontally across the city grid is compressed into a single upright gesture.
These luminous columns embody the density and diversity of urban life. Multiple rhythms coexist within one structure, fast and slow, individual and collective.
The object becomes a concentrated expression of New York’s energy, a vertical trace of movement, connection, and the vibrant continuity that keeps the city alive.
I create spaces and objects that translate invisible urban conditions into physical experience.
In cities like New York, we live within systems of constant movement, density, and stimulation. Light becomes a language. It flows through streets, reflects across surfaces, and connects people who may never meet. These overlapping signals form a continuous field of energy that shapes how we feel, move, and exist together.
My work makes these dynamics tangible. I am interested in how rhythm, repetition, and compression can transform overwhelming environments into moments of awareness.
The vertical light columns condense the horizontal flow of the city into a concentrated form. They capture fragments of motion, traces of presence, and the coexistence of multiple speeds within one structure.
Through this translation, I aim to reveal the beauty within urban intensity and create moments where perception slows, allowing us to sense the energy that surrounds and connects us.
A project by
Annabelle Schneider/Studio Annabelle Schneider
Urban Currents translates the dynamic flow of New York’s street grid into a vertical light object.
Inspired by the city’s dense street canyons, the piece captures the layered movement of light at night. Headlights, brake lights, reflections, and passing bodies merge into continuous streams of color that define the urban atmosphere.
These horizontal flows are compressed into vertical columns. Stacked color segments represent moments of motion and pause, fast and slow rhythms coexisting within one structure.
The object embodies the energy of the metropolis as a living system. Individual trajectories overlap, intersect, and continue forward, forming a shared field of movement.
Urban Currents functions both as illumination and as a spatial marker. It brings the intensity of the city into a contained form, offering a moment to observe, reflect, and connect with the rhythms that shape urban life.