Warde: HQ Architects’ Inflatable Flowers in Jerusalem’s Valero Square

Walk into Valero Square in central Jerusalem and a giant red flower opens above your head. Step away and it slowly droops shut again. Warde, an installation by the Tel Aviv firm HQ Architects, uses four inflatable blooms to bring shade, light and a touch of theatre to a neglected city square.

Warde: four giant flowers in Valero Square

HQ Architects presented Warde in October 2015. The project consists of four inflatable fabric flowers, each 9 metres high and 9 metres wide, raised above the square. When deflated they hang like wilted petals; when inflated they open into wide red canopies.

The square sits in the city centre beside a busy market and is split in two by Jerusalem’s tram line. Before the project it was a run-down space, home to waste composters and an electricity substation. Warde formed part of the Jerusalem municipality’s wider effort to improve public space in the city centre.

How the inflatable flowers respond to people

Each flower inflates on its own. It opens when pedestrians walk underneath and closes when they leave, and it stays open for as long as someone stands beneath it. The flowers also bloom when a tram approaches the station, so the square comes alive with every arrival. According to designboom’s report on the project, the opened petals work as shade canopies for passers-by on hot days.

At night, built-in lights turn the blooms into giant lamps that illuminate the square, which is why many reports described Warde as a set of flower-shaped streetlights.

Interactive public art and urban renewal

Warde belongs to a growing family of responsive urban installations: objects that change shape, light or sound in reaction to the people around them. The idea is simple and easy to read from a distance. A flower that opens as you arrive makes you feel noticed, and it gives people a reason to linger in a place they might otherwise hurry through.

The scale also matters. At 9 metres across, each flower changes the space directly around a person, while the bright red stands out against the surrounding buildings. Dor Kedmi’s photographs capture the installation by day and after dark, open and closed.

A film released by HQ Architects showed the flowers in motion as people and trams passed.

More moving sculptures and living art

For another work that depends on movement, see the Ali and Nino sculpture in Batumi, where two metal figures slowly move towards each other and pass through one another.

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