Page 153 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

art commission.

Designed in collaboration with the architectural practice Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, the

scheme will be in place for the rest of the decade. The new generation of LEDs minimise light

pollution and will cause less damage to flora and fauna. Public access to the warren of paths

along the bank is also being upgraded.

Illuminated River’s original plan had been to revamp 15 bridges, from Tower Bridge to Albert

Bridge. Nine has been set as the limit for the time being, but it’s still hoped that others can one

day be added to the list. Rothschild even fantasises about extending the lights all the way
upstream to Richmond Bridge.

It’s a deceptively simple but evocative gesture. In London, as in other British cities, public art
has a dubious track record. Artists, like too many of their peers in architecture, have often

seemed more interested in indulging their ego than in worrying about what the public might

actually want. The Thames used to be the primeval mechanism that fuelled London’s prosperity.

Whole communities drew their livelihood from it. Now it’s often treated as little more than an

afterthought, overshadowed by crass, half-empty towers of flats for the super-rich.

I live on a narrowboat on the Thames just west of London, so I’m used to being reasonably close

to nature (although boats are actually much more cosy and comfortable than they look to
outsiders). Even the weeks of winter flooding are fun — most of the time. The river is a living

organism; you cannot take its power for granted.

Rothschild had the idea for her project soon after the 2012 London Olympics. Walking along the

riverside one night, she was struck by how gloomy and forbidding some of the paths were,

especially for women out on their own after dark. Her father, Jacob Rothschild, had proposed a

light scheme for Waterloo Bridge two decades ago, but failed to get planning permission from

Ken Livingstone, the mayor at the time.

It took five years for this new venture to come to fruition. It was, Rothschild recalls, a

dauntingly complicated process since control over the waterway is divided between scores of
municipal authorities and ancient guilds. Hovering in the background, as we all know, was the