Once in a while does no harm, so we are not broaching an architectural project here, but rather proposals in three dimensions with imaginative possibilities for a new generation of lighting technologies. These different projects are part of a large, travelling exhibition at European level by Royal Philips Electronics N.V. To show the keen interest of Philips Lighting for innovative projects, eight projects by first rate architects and lighting designers help convince us of the role of lighting, and above all, of state-of-the-art systems.

1. Architecture-Studio / Paris, France
A completely dark cube that effaces landmarks is lighted according to the movements on the glass panes. Accompanied by slightly distorted urban noises, a city emerges in fragmentary fashion, and then fades away.

2. BDP Lighting London, United Kingdom
A creative exploration of the links between light, architecture and the human experience, the container places the person at the centre of the design. The elements react to touch to simulate a pulse by means of a blue light.

3. Studio November - Milan, Italy
This real tactile experience – a simple room where visitors approaching the walls, without touching them, can switch on the 30 000 LEDs that cover them – bears witness to the relation between the digital fixture of the LEDs and the freedom of movement of the body in space.

4. Henning Larsen Architects – Copenhagen, Denmark
The portable personal lighting unit offers optimal mobility. Two light sources, individualised, make it possible to look in two parallel universes at the same time. With the portable lamp, no space is absolute any more.

5. Lichtkunstlicht - Berlin, Germany
Light sources placed vertically diffuse light from LEDs on a steel structure reminiscent of an old machine that dominates the interior of the colourless container. The volutes of white light make an intense and strange impression.

6. Mansilla + Tuńón Arquitectos - Madrid, Spain
As architecture is both an abstract and a human environment, space is seen as a place for reflection illuminated with light. And it is indeed light and movement that are noticed first, rather than the physical appearance of the objects.

7. ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd] – Rotterdam, Netherlands
The brainchild of a visionary conceptual strategy, this project creates an infinite universe of light that fades after three or four reflections. Visitors get the feeling of floating in a universe of light lines moving slowly and clouds of points.

8. Treusch Architecture - Vienna, Austria
A coloured space made of light surrounds the visitor, taking him or her to another world. It is composed of immaterial limits acting as a metaphor for real life through the variation of the intensity of colours and the background sound.