Emmanuelle Moureaux’s Rainbow Vision Comes To Hong Kong

Something good is afoot in Hong Kong. The city with the most skyscrapers of any in the world is now home to Central Yards, a 1.6-million-square-foot “groundscraper” that’s horizontally, instead of vertically, connecting thousands of daily commuters with Central, the bustling business hub, and the Victoria Harbour ferry piers. Further luring pedestrians is the aptly named FLOW, the 54th iteration of and latest in Emmanuelle Moureaux’s 100 Colors series, which she has been building for more than a decade. Previous permanent and temporary installation sites include Shanghai, Paris, Tokyo, New York, and Mountain View, California, but this is the artist-architect’s first in Hong Kong—and that’s future oriented. All have embodied her signature rainbow palette and profuse amounts of numerals, letters, or even butterflies, cut from paper or metal. FLOW is composed of approximately 4,000 numbers and 24 letters—“The material itself is not the focus of the work. What matters is color,” Moureaux says when asked what they’re made of—suspended with fine wire from the lobby and escalator ceiling, which morphs from 18 feet high to 10. The letters spell out Central Yards; the numbers are the years 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030, 2031, and 2032. “As with time, the sequence unfolds moment by moment,” Moureaux adds, explaining the reasoning behind the forward-looking concept. 2032 is also when phase two of Central Yards is scheduled for completion.