LightWell

Selected as a winner in Boston’s first Public Space Invitational (PSI) LightWell is a landscape intervention that seeks to raise public awareness on the issue of stormwater runoff, storage & recharge in Boston’s South End, a neighborhood built on fill and plagued by problems caused by a dropping ground water level. LightWell is a glowing object, a seat, a planting edge, and a vegetated dry well for stormwater infiltration. It creates planting beds of native wild flowers that becomes habitat for butterflies and other beneficial insects.
The installation is intended to make the systems of stormwater storage and recharge, which have traditionally been hidden below ground, into visible parts of the landscape. Powered by solar PV panels, LED lights make this structure glow at night to celebrate an active landscape infrastructure, and to communicate information about ground water. A wi-fi connected microcontroller connects water level sensors, lighting controls and a web interface to gather and display data on water infiltration. The colors of the LightWell LED lights change according to water flow and storage levels to make the cycles of stormwater infiltration beautiful and animated parts of public space.
This public installation created a new form of sustainable infrastructure and public art, enlivening public space with beautiful organic and glowing forms, illustrating simple ways of improving the environment, and creating educational opportunities to engage the community with sustainable landscapes. When deployed at a large scale these installations can have multiplying effects in the environment, becoming a field of glowing objects at night, infiltrating water, creating spaces for play, and changing the perception of public park spaces.

For more information on this and other LightWell installations visit BostonLightWell Project.