Thank you, Brooklyn, you light up our lives. You've given us the Dodgers, the Bridge, the Heights, the Eagle, your grand museum, the Promenade, your interesting take on the English language, Coney Island, the Navy Yard, your myriad churches, Williamsburg – and if that's not enough, you’ve now brought us the first annual New York Festival of Light (NYFOL) held in DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).
I left my Manhattan office on a Friday night and headed toward the nearest subway. Like any dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, I know the subway is the best way to navigate the Big Apple. After 20 minutes underground, I reached York Street on the other side of the East River. And while the ramp from the “F” Train is long, steep and ill-conceived, it brings straphangers to the heart of a small village within the confines of the big city.
For the uninitiated, DUMBO, the once rundown, barren warehouse and manufacturing district, is now a mecca for art galleries, boutiques, restaurants, technology start-ups and luxury condominiums. It’s also a magnet for architecture enthusiasts with its quaint and charming period structures, panoramic views of the waterfront and the New York skyline, and the dominating presence to the Manhattan Bridge – all the perfect venue for NYFOL's extravaganza of light.
In a retail environment, lighting is the icing on the cake. The same holds for a great metropolitan center. In New York, the brightest city of all, Times Square has always been the focal point of the illuminated frosting. For three days in November, however, the city beacon burned brightest at the Pearl Street Triangle and the Manhattan Bridge anchorage in DUMBO.
Architects and retail designers know that light breathes life into a space. While the cobblestone streets with the requisite independent bookstore and French bakery set the stage, NYFOL lit DUMBO’s autumn night with a phantasm of multi-sensory installations including neon, lasers, projection mapping, videography, illuminated sculptures and light reflecting mannequins.
According to Liam O’Braion, a producer of large-scale entertainment events (and co-founder of the NYFOL event with Ira Levy, an award-winning New York City-based lighting designer), “A major component of the New York Festival of Light was to show the public the wonders of lasers and projection mapping, but it was also to show other implications for light, such as fashion, the performing arts and wearable technologies.”
With light as their medium, O’Braion and Levy were impresarios, finding a wide array of renowned international artists working in varying light-related mediums; and conductors, curating a pounding, pulsating, orchestration of light that transformed the archway under the Manhattan Bridge into a proscenium of energy and life. For three nights in November, thousands streamed to the Pearl Street Triangle as the infrastructure of this small town within a big city morphed into a shimmering beacon brought to life with a masterful brushstroke of light.
Eric Feigenbaum is a recognized leader in the visual merchandising and store design industries with both domestic and international design experience. He served as corporate director of visual merchandising for Stern’s Department Store, a division of Federated Department Stores, from 1986 to 1995. After Stern’s, he assumed the position of director of visual merchandising for WalkerGroup/CNI, an architectural design firm in New York City. Currently, he serves as the chair of the Visual Merchandising Department at LIM College (New York), and was also an adjunct professor of Store Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In addition to being the New York Editor of VMSD magazine, Eric is also a founding member of PAVE (A Partnership for Planning and Visual Education). Currently, he is also president and director of creative services for his own retail design company, Embrace Design.