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Diamonds for Tokyo Tower
November 30, 2008
TOKYO – December marks Tokyo Tower’s 50th anniversary, and to commemorate the occasion the landmark will be getting a special luminary treatment.
From the evening of December 1st, Tokyoites will be able to view both the default “Landmark Light” illumination, lit by 180 floodlights, and a brand new “Diamond Veil” design, whereby the tower’s middle exterior will appear to be strung by vertically running diamonds.
Motoko Ishii, president of Motoko Ishii Lighting Design, the company behind the lighting spectacle, says that many have told her that the 333-meter-tall tapering steel structure resembles a classy woman in a skirt. “I thought to myself about what would be the best present that I could give her,” explained Ishii in an interview with The Tokyo Reporter in October. “I ended up coming up with the diamond idea.”
Though various lighting displays existed previously, Ishii’s “Landmark Light” first began illuminating the transmitter and tourist attraction in a bright orange in 1989. For this new work, 228 “diamond” lights will be inserted at nodes within the tower’s structure. Floodlights placed along the top and bottom will provide a contrast to the diamond dress, rendering it aloft on multiple evenings until Christmas Day.
Tokyo Tower first opened to the pubic on December 23, 1958.
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[...] gown. “People often say that Tokyo Tower looks like a classy lady in a skirt,” explains Motoko Ishii, president of Motoko Ishii Lighting Design, the company behind the lighting spectacle. “So I wanted to give her a 50th birthday [...]