Light Portal
Central Artery Tunnel, Boston, Massachusetts
1995-2003

The new bridge and tunnel leading the main highway up the Eastern seaboard beneath Boston creates a void more than 200 m long and 60 m wide in the centre of downtown Boston.  This man-made landscape of huge structures and shifting planes is alien and daunting to the pedestrian.  The Light Portal is an urban intervention that mediates between the experience of this new landscape for the motorist and pedestrian.
These different experiences of the site are linked by the definition of a huge portal on the ground.  This horizontal datum line is the last in a series of "gates" formed by the masts of the bridge through which the motorist must pass upon entering the city.
The portal is composed of five hundred metal fins attached to the shaped concrete sound barrier wall.  The fins are coated with a printed microprism film which reflects a light back to its source.  This phenomenon makes the fins glow in the low light conditions under the bridge and in the headlights of the cars entering and leaving the tunnel.

Luke Lowings and James Carpenter designed this project as part of the Art-in-Architecture programme of the Central Artery Tunnel Project.  It will be completed in 2003.