TERRARIUM
Location: The Bayer Landmark Building | New York, NY, 2005
6 ft x 19 ft x 7 ft (1.83 m x 5.79 m x 2.13 m)
Acrylic, convex lens, LEDs, custom lighting sequence, and electrical hardware
TERRARIUM is a permanent, site-specific light sculpture installed in the lobby of the Bayer Building at North Moore Street in TriBeCa, its acrylic bubble forms and shifting LED color sequence illuminating a 110-year-old landmark from dusk to dawn as a living meditation on the neighborhood’s layered history and the porous boundary between the urban world and the natural one.
- One of Amorós’s earliest and most enduring permanent public commissions, TERRARIUM has lit the lobby of the 1881 landmark building continuously since 2005, functioning as both a work of art and the building’s primary lobby lighting for over two decades.
- Philips Colorkinetics (2016) published a dedicated case study on TERRARIUM, noting that after running for over 70,000 hours across its first decade, not a single luminaire had failed, with the only maintenance required being the replacement of two power supplies following Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
- Amorós drew the work’s conceptual framework from the history of the building itself, which has served successively as a storage facility, a grocery, a dye firm, and a pharmaceutical company before becoming the residential and commercial lofts it houses today, with each bubble in the installation containing photographs documenting that layered past.
- Tribeca Citizen has referenced TERRARIUM on multiple occasions as one of the neighborhood’s defining permanent art landmarks, situating the work within the broader transformation of TriBeCa from industrial district to one of New York City’s most culturally significant residential communities.
- TERRARIUM remains one of the longest-running permanent public light sculptures by a living artist in New York City, affirming Amorós’s position as a foundational figure in the history of LED-based public art in the United States.
TERRARIUM is a permanent, site-specific, public art project located in Tribeca, New York City. The function of this 110-year-old building has changed over time, from a storage site to a grocery, to a dye firm to a drug company. Today it houses residential and commercial lofts. Amoros created a piece that reflects the evolution of Tribeca, a neighborhood constantly in flux.
The term “terrarium” refers to a glass enclosure used to sustain plant and animal life in an unnatural atmosphere—often indoors. Although intended to reproduce a natural environment, these terrariums are far from the fields and forests of the countryside. Instead, they are isolated, veritably existing in an artificial world of in-betweens.
TERRARIUM is an installation intended to provide lighting to the lobby of a landmark building. From dusk to dawn, shifting patterns of light radiate from an assortment of acrylic bubbles mounted on the walls. The work is an organic space within the city and a simultaneous extension of the urban surroundings. The spherical shapes and colors evoke an almost amphibian quality, yet displayed within these bubbles are photographs showing us the past and present life of the building. The piece represents a middle ground between private and public, a compromise between the tranquility of the indoors and the din of the hectic city.
This work of art is meant to inspire reflection. Its contradictions evoke the feeling of elements taken out of context, rearranged, and reconstructed to form something entirely new. To passers-by on the street, it is an alteration of a familiar landscape, a moment to re-imagine their daily world.