(UK) – Transforming light and sound into a sensory interpretation of climate volatility, this year’s light art installation creates a space for reflection.

LiGHT 26 will welcome visitors to experience Take a Moment, with a new immersive light art installation by ZHA. Presented in collaboration with formalighting, with Display Graphics as the installation build partner and commissioned by [d]arc media.

Taking place at the Business Design Centre, London, across the 18 and 19 of November, LiGHT 26 will once again demonstrate the creative possibilities of light beyond its functional applications, inviting visitors to experience an installation that explores the relationship between nature, transformation and the increasingly fragile balance of our environment.

Take a Moment invites visitors to consider the forces that shape the world around us, creating an immersive experience that heightens awareness of the natural systems we often take for granted.

A sequence of atmospheric environments within three distinct chambers, the installation reinterprets our changing climatic conditions within an evolving interplay of light, sound and space.

Each chamber investigates one of nature’s fundamental forces: sun, water and wind. Together, they explore the delicate equilibrium of the natural world, presenting these familiar elements through cycles of growth and destruction, stability and disruption, peace and volatility.

Sunlight can nourish, illuminate and sustain, yet its intensification can result in drought, extreme heat and increasingly, wildfires. Water can refresh and sustain life, while rising sea levels and changing weather patterns result in disastrous flooding. A gentle breeze can become a destructive hurricane.

These transformations are presented in three immersive environments: Drought, Flooding and Hurricane.  In each chamber, light and sound build and recede through repeating cycles. Choreographing these cycles of compression and release, darkness and illumination, silence and sound, light becomes both material and storyteller, while sound extends the experience beyond the physical boundaries of each chamber. Moments of tranquillity are deliberately contrasted with moments of tension, creating an experience that is both captivating and unsettling.

At its core, Take a Moment reflects on the climate crisis not through statistics, but through sensory experience. By immersing visitors within escalating conditions, the installation asks us to contemplate the relationship between human behaviour and the systems that sustain life – highlighting the increasingly fragile boundary between harmony and instability.

ZHA has partnered with formalighting to bring Take a Moment to life, drawing on the lighting manufacturer’s expertise in innovative, precision-engineered lighting solutions to help translate the architectural vision into an immersive sensory experience. Through the creative application of light, the installation explores changing intensities, atmospheres and the relationship between illumination and darkness, demonstrating how lighting technology can extend beyond functionality to become an integral part of the architectural narrative. Together, ZHA and formalighting bring architecture, light and sound into dialogue, creating an environment that encourages visitors to pause, reflect and engage with the world around them. Display Graphics joins the collaboration as build partner, supporting the physical realisation of the installation at LiGHT 26.

The installation continues LiGHT’s commitment to showcasing the creative and experiential potential of light, following previous installations including Intra-Spectrum by Frankie Boyle in 2024 and Re: Vision by Speirs Major Light Architecture in 2025.

For visitors to LiGHT 26, Take a Moment offers an opportunity to engage with light in a different way. Beyond the products, technologies and conversations taking place across the exhibition, it creates space for contemplation and a deeper appreciation of how light, architecture and the environment influence our perception of the world.

SAVE THE DATE

Join us in the [d]arc thoughts space at 5.15pm on Wednesday 18 November, where [d]arc media Managing Editor, Helen Ankers will sit down with the ZHA design team to explore the inspiration behind the project. Following the Q&A, there will be an opportunity to meet the designers and experience ‘Take a Moment’ for yourself.

For further information and to register to attend the show, visit www.lightexpo.london.