From 20 November to 6 December 2025, Noor Riyadh, the world’s largest light art festival, returned with over 60 installations by 59 artists from 24 countries, presented across six major sites including Qasr Al Hokm District, King Abdulaziz Historical Center, stc Metro Station, KAFD Metro Station, Al Faisaliah Tower, and JAX District. Curated by Mami Kataoka, Sara Almutlaq, and Li Zhenhua, the 2025 theme, ‘In the Blink of an Eye,’ reflected Riyadh’s rapid transformation and positions the festival as a platform for public participation and artistic experimentation. In an exclusive interview with designboom, Noor Riyadh’s director Nouf Almoneef, takes us into a journey of light and art, touching on the festival’s mission to bring art to the people by making it accessible in everyday life and creating meaningful, memorable moments for everyone who engages with it.

‘Noor Riyadh is now in its fifth edition, and what keeps it meaningful is how deeply it belongs to the people of this city. We built it as a platform for creativity – for artists and for audiences who wanted to see themselves reflected in the works. Every year we rethink the locations so that art becomes part of daily life, whether that means placing installations in historic courtyards, public gardens, or metro stations. Our mission is always to bring art closer to the people,’ begins Nouf Almoneef, Director of Noor Riyadh.

Between the lines by Abdelrahman Elshahed | image © designboom

‘making Riyadh one of the world’s most livable cities’

Noor Riyadh’s most defining quality is its accessibility. By distributing artworks across historic zones, cultural districts, and newly launched metro stations, the festival transforms Riyadh into an open-air gallery. The curatorial strategy ensured that encounters with light art happen not only in traditional art venues but within places of everyday movement, commuter corridors, public plazas, pedestrian routes, and family gathering areas. This approach aligns with Riyadh Art’s long-term mission to integrate creativity into the capital’s urban fabric and create ‘everyday moments of joy,’ a principle emphasized across the program’s strategic documents.

‘By choosing different locations each year – parks, heritage sites, gardens, metro stations – we create a network of public spaces that are connected through light; this is how we make the festival accessible. That sense of belonging is essential to our vision of making Riyadh one of the world’s most livable and creatively engaged cities,’ continues Nouf.

Liminal Space Air-Time by Shinji Ohmaki

the six locations create a geographic journey through riyadh

Beyond its large-scale installations, Noor Riyadh sustains a citywide public program that includes workshops, talks, performances, and family activities such as Printed Stories, Dancing Threads, and Stories from the Shadows—all designed to engage audiences of different ages and backgrounds. This community-driven programming complements Riyadh Art’s broader achievements, which include over 6,500 community engagement activities and 9.6 million visitors since launch. By inviting residents not only to observe but to participate, Noor Riyadh positions public art as a shared civic experience rather than a spectacle.

The 2025 theme, ‘In the Blink of an Eye,’ reflected Riyadh’s rapid evolution from heritage sites like Qasr Al Hokm to the sleek infrastructure of the newly launched metro network, showcased in festival documents as symbols of the city’s forward momentum. The artworks amplified this narrative: kinetic sculptures visualize movement, light projections reframe architectural history, and metro-based installations mirror the rhythms of urban life. Together, the festival’s six locations created a geographic journey through Riyadh’s past, present, and future.

‘We chose locations that reveal how the city is expanding – its heritage districts, its cultural centers, its futuristic metro lines. When visitors move between these sites, they experience the story of Riyadh itself: a place honoring its past while building bold new futures. For many people seeing these changes, the artworks help make sense of the transformation by offering moments of reflection within the movement.’

Sliced by Encor Studio | image © designboom

As part of Riyadh Art, one of the four original Vision 2030 mega projects, Noor Riyadh plays a pivotal role in shaping the cultural infrastructure of the capital. Permanent installations, educational programs, and public-realm activations continue to expand the city’s creative footprint. The festival’s long-term legacy lies not only in its scale or global recognition but in how it fosters civic pride, cultural exchange, and everyday access to creativity.

‘I think Noor Riyadh after 2025 has already been recognized internationally and locally, but recognition is not our only goal. What we want is to create meaningful, memorable moments for people, for visitors, for artists, for curators, for residents. As Riyadh continues to evolve, Noor Riyadh will grow with it, building stronger connections between communities and art. This is how we imagine the future: a city where creativity is a shared language, part of daily life, and part of who we are becoming,’ concludes Nouf Almoneef.

Light Float Down Like A Feather by Wang Yuyang

Atmospheric Seeing by Studio Above&Below

Between Light and Stone by Nebras AlJoaib

Center by Ivana Franke | image © designboom

Synthesis by László Zsolt Bordos-Christophe Berthonneau | image © designboom

Troppo Fiso! by Traumnovelle

Luna Somnium by Fuse | image © designboom

event info:

name: Noor Riyadh 2025 | @noorriyadhfestival

organization: Riyadh Art

curation: Mami Kataoka, Li Zhenhua, and Sara Almutlaq

dates: 20 November – 6 December, 2025

location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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Emirati artist Shaikha Al Mazrou presents The Contingent Object at Manar Abu Dhabi 2025, a public light art exhibition unfolding within a coastal landscape shaped by mangroves and tidal air.

Sited close to water, the luminous work takes the form of a circular salt field measuring roughly thirty meters across. The installation registers time through material change. Seawater settles into a shallow plane, and as heat and wind take hold, evaporation thickens the surface. Color intensifies, crystals begin to assemble, and a pale crust develops along the edges. What begins as a calm liquid state gradually compacts into a dense, reflective plane, carrying the imprint of climate and duration.

Shaikha Al Mazrou, Contingent Object, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Shaikha Al Mazrou uses Material as Process

Creating the Contingent Object, artist Shaikha Al Mazrou, employs salt as both medium and indicator. The material’s responsiveness to environment gives the piece a living quality, shaped daily by light levels, humidity, and shifting temperatures. The ground plane remains precise in geometry, yet its surface resists exact repetition. Fine variations accrue across the circle, producing subtle tonal gradients and textures that register up close before resolving at scale.

After dusk, a restrained lighting system activates along the perimeter and beneath the salt plane. The illumination stays low and even, allowing the circle to hover visually above the ground. Approached on foot, the work reveals itself gradually. The surrounding darkness compresses attention toward the illuminated edge, creating a measured spatial rhythm that encourages slow movement and extended viewing.

Shaikha Al Mazrou, Contingent Object, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Light, Landscape, and Duration

Within the broader context of Manar Abu Dhabi, The Contingent Object participates in a city-scale conversation about light, site, and public access. The biennial brings together installations that engage outdoor settings through restraint and technical precision. Our recent coverage of DRIFT’s installation for Manar Abu Dhabi, which translated motion and aerial choreography into a shared nocturnal experience, offers a point of comparison rooted in light as a spatial tool rather than an effect-driven gesture.

Shaikha Al Mazrou’s approach remains grounded in physical transformation. Light plays a supporting role, tracing the boundary of the work rather than overtaking it. The glow frames the salt field and reveals the incremental shifts in its surface, reinforcing the idea of duration as a central design parameter.

Shaikha Al Mazrou, Contingent Object, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi

Shaikha Al Mazrou, Contingent Object, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Shaikha Al Mazrou, Contingent Object, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Shaikha Al Mazrou, Contingent Object, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Shaikha Al Mazrou, Contingent Object, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Shaikha Al Mazrou, Contingent Object, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi

project info:

name: Contingent Object

artist: Shaikha Al Mazrou | @shaikha.almazrou

location: Abu Dhabi, UAE

photography: © Lance Gerber | @lance.gerber

festival: Manar Abu Dhabi 2025 | @publicartabudhabi

theme: The Light Compass

dates: November 15th, 2025 – January 4th, 2026

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Relic installation for Noor Riyadh in Saudi Arabia builds on Karolina Halatek’s previous site-specific piece in Metz, redefining the concept of a monument. The pyramid-shaped structure emits a sky-tracing beam of white light through mist and mirrored surfaces, creating a serene gathering place. As visitors approach the sculptural composition, they are reflected, illuminated, and transformed. The public artwork invites each person to acknowledge their own presence and significance, momentarily becoming a living monument and an active participant in co-creating history. Combining modern aesthetics and technology with evocative form, Relic serves not as a historical tribute but as a participatory space for reflection and transformation.

a pyramid-shaped structure emits a vertical beam of white light | image courtesy of Noor Riyadh Festival

Karolina Halatek Reimagines Monument as interactive Experience

Karolina Halatek’s works are catalysts for experience. Using light as her central medium, she creates site-specific installations that integrate visual, architectural, and sculptural elements. She studied Design for Performance at UAL (UK), Fine Arts at UdK Berlin, and Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland, and took part in Olafur Eliasson’s Institut für Raumexperimente. The Polish artist is a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and a visiting researcher at the Lighting Lab, Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. The installation was produced by TETRO+A agency and exhibited at the fifth edition of the Noor Riyadh festival titled ‘In the Blink of an Eye,’ Saudi Arabia, 2025.

mist and mirrored surfaces frame a sky-tracing column of illumination | image courtesy of Noor Riyadh Festival

the piece encourages collective engagement and shared experience | image courtesy of Karolina Halatek

the installation forms a quiet gathering point within the festival | image courtesy of Karolina Halatek

light and mist subtly transform each person entering the space | image courtesy of Karolina Halatek

the work invites visitors to recognize their own presence | image courtesy of Karolina Halatek

participants momentarily become part of a living monument | image courtesy of Karolina Halatek

Relic blends contemporary aesthetics with technological precision | image courtesy of Karolina Halatek

the work acts as a participatory space rather than a traditional monument | image courtesy of Karolina Halatek

project info:

name: Relic for Noor Riyadh

artist: Karolina Halatek | @karolinahalatek

location: Qasr Al Hokm Metro Station, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

materials: steel, stainless steel, acrylic

dimensions: 300 x 600 (base diameter)

event: Noor Riyadh Festival | @noorriyadhfestival

production: TETRO+A | @tetro_agency

special thanks to: Nouf Almoneef | @nouf.almoneef, Riyadh Art | @riyadhartofficial, Matthieu Debay | @mattdebay, Nicolas Roziecki | @hyvn, Matteo Messina | @mttmex, Adrien Jolivet | @adrisocialbot, Gabriel Ducolombier | @rielgabzz, Lavínia D. Freitas | @lavinfreitas, m5iw | @m5iw

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

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Skyward by Ezequiel Pini, the artist and designer behind Six N. Five, glimmers within the landscape of Manar Abu Dhabi 2025 as a composed encounter between material density and reflected atmosphere. The public artwork begins with a single gabbro stone extracted from the UAE town of Ras al Khaimah, positioned so its dark surface absorbs the desert sun while revealing fine variations in texture. Its presence feels anchored to geological time as it was first shaped by natural forces and then by weeks of hand refinement.

Across from the stone, a illuminated mirrored plane of digital art introduces an entirely different register. The surface gathers the sky and returns it to the ground, creating a shifting field that responds to weather, hour, and the quiet movement of visitors. This pairing forms the basic spatial rhythm of Skyward, one element rooted in the earth, the other oriented toward the open expanse overhead.

Ezequiel Pini (a.k.a. Six N. Five), Skyward, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

six n. five sculpts with stone and shimmering light

Six N. Five‘s placement of the monolith and mirror frames a passage that draws visitors to Skyward through a measured sequence. The gap between them serves as a calibrated threshold, where the mass of gabbro stone meets the immaterial clarity of reflected light. Ezequiel Pini’s work often dwells on elemental contrasts, and here the installation translates those interests into a built environment.

Digital projections shimmer across the mirrored surface, guided by constellations associated with Abu Dhabi. These animated sequences bring a sense of quiet movement to the installation, echoing traditions of navigation shaped by star patterns across desert and sea. The effect remains grounded in architectural experience: visitors read the surface at scale, observing how light behaves across its height and how the projection alters their perception of depth.

Ezequiel Pini (a.k.a. Six N. Five), Skyward, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

engaging abu dhabi’s desert landscape

As the sun shifts, Six N. Five’s Skyward mirror serves as an inclined horizon, folding portions of sky into the visitor’s field of view. This creates a subtle reorientation, encouraging upward attention while still maintaining a strong relationship with the ground plane. The installation’s alignment within the desert setting amplifies this effect, giving Skyward a steady presence amid open terrain.

The stone’s handcrafted finish invites close viewing. Faint tool marks remain at certain edges, offering evidence of the labor involved and underscoring the contrast between permanence and adaptation. In relation to the mirror, the stone’s matte density stabilizes the composition, heightening awareness of the changes taking place across the reflective surface.

Ezequiel Pini (a.k.a. Six N. Five), Skyward, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Ezequiel Pini (a.k.a. Six N. Five), Skyward, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Ezequiel Pini (a.k.a. Six N. Five), Skyward, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Ezequiel Pini (a.k.a. Six N. Five), Skyward, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Ezequiel Pini (a.k.a. Six N. Five), Skyward, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

Ezequiel Pini (a.k.a. Six N. Five), Skyward, 2025. Manar Abu Dhabi 2025. image courtesy Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi & Public Art Abu Dhabi. photo by Lance Gerber

project info:

name: Skyward

artist: Ezequiel Pini (Six N Five) | @sixnfive

location: Jubail Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE

client: Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, Public Art Abu Dhabi

completion: 2025

photography: © Lance Gerber © Stéphane Aït Ouarab / Saï

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Es Devlin unveils Library of Us, a vast, glowing amphitheater of books, sound, and movement that serves as the major centerpiece of Faena Art Miami Art Week 2025. Marking ten years of Faena Art in Miami Beach, Devlin’s commission stretches across the shoreline as a kinetic, 6-meter-tall triangular bookshelf that rotates on its axis, its reflection amplified by a surrounding pool and a circular reading table that seats hundreds.

On view until December 7th, 2025, the installation acts as a public library, an illuminated sculpture, and an arena for collective reading, forming the core of a district-wide program of talks, performances, and communal rituals. Beyond its physical scale, Library of Us continues Devlin’s ongoing investigation into libraries as kinetic sculptures. Earlier in 2025 she presented Library of Light at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, where daily collective readings drew nearly 200,000 visitors (find designboom’s previous coverage here). 

all images by Sunn Studio

a kinetic library that reorganizes time and encounter

At the center of the beach installation sits the 15-meter-long triangular bookshelf, holding 2,500 books and a continuous 10-meter LED line that streams text across its spine. The entire structure turns once every ten minutes, creating a quiet, perceptible drift that affects the people seated around it. Visitors read at a two-ring circular table, an outer circle that stays still and an inner circle that rotates with the sculpture, resulting in shifting perspectives. Every slow rotation introduces a new passage, a new neighbor across the table, and a subtle sense of shared temporality.

A 250-excerpt audio score, read by Devlin herself, lays out a polyphonic field of voices, memories, and literary fragments, underscored by music. Materials such as steel, marine plywood, mirror, water, and LED turn the beach into a reflective, fluid environment where text moves at the pace of tides and pages.

When the week concludes, all 2,500 books from Library of Us, supplied through a partnership with Penguin Random House, will be donated to public libraries, schools, and community organizations across Miami.

Es Devlin unveils Library of Us

reading room and tracing time expand the project indoors

Two additional commissions complement the beach installation and deepen Devlin’s study of reading, time, and community. In the Faena Cathedral, the Reading Room appears as a 14-meter bench with an integrated bookshelf and LED screen. The work is built from phrases contributed by the entire Faena hotel staff, housekeeping, gardeners, restaurant teams, security, maintenance, and long-time collaborators. Devlin reads these texts aloud throughout the day as the phrases rise along the display, offering a participatory portrait of a hotel rendered through the books, songs, and poems that shape the lives of the people who work within it.

Meanwhile, in the Faena Art Project Room, Tracing Time presents drawings and paintings on glass, paper, and TV screens. These works offer a close reading of Devlin’s process, its layers, repetitions, and mark-making, mirroring the slow accumulations that define her large-scale installations. Together, the three works form a rare survey of Devlin’s multidisciplinary practice, bridging sound, architecture, text, scenography, and performance through the shared concern of how communities gather around language. 

a vast, glowing amphitheater of books, sound, and movement | image by Oriol Tarridas

the major centerpiece of Faena Art Miami Art Week 2025

Devlin’s commission stretches across the shoreline as a kinetic, 6-meter-tall triangular bookshelf

the installation rotates on its axis | image by Oriol Tarridas

a surrounding pool reflects the bookshelf | image by Oriol Tarridas

a reading table that seats hundreds encircles Library of Us | image by Oriol Tarridas

the 15-meter-long triangular bookshelf holds 2,500 books | image by Oriol Tarridas

the entire structure turns once every ten minutes

a continuous 10-meter LED line streams text across its spine | image by Oriol Tarridas

an outer circle stays still and an inner circle rotates with the sculpture | image by Oriol Tarridas

every slow rotation introduces a new passage | image by Oriol Tarridas

steel, marine plywood, mirror, water, and LED turn the beach into a reflective, fluid environment

text moves at the pace of tides and pages

when the week concludes, all 2,500 books from Library of Us will be donated | image by Oriol Tarridas

a public library, an illuminated sculpture, and an arena for collective reading | image by Oriol Tarridas

project info:

name: Library of Us

artist: Es Devlin | @esdevlin

location: Faena Beach, Miami Beach, Florida

dates: December 1st–7th, 2025

commissioned by: Faena Art | @faenaart

The post es devlin’s triangular bookshelf rotates within a mirrored pool for miami art week 2025 appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

From 20 November to 6 December 2025, the world’s largest light art festival transforms six major locations across the Saudi capital into an illuminated citywide gallery. Curated by Mami Kataoka, Sara Almutlaq, and Li Zhenhua, Noor Riyadh brings together 59 artists from 24 countries to present 60 artworks, including more than 35 new commissions, under the theme ‘In the Blink of an Eye.’ With international and local artists like Shinji Ohmaki, atelier oï, Ayoung Kim, Muhannad Shono, and Ziyad Alroqi, the festival explores Riyadh’s rapid transformation, inviting visitors to witness moments of change through large-scale installations across Qasr Al Hokm District, King Abdulaziz Historical Center, stc Metro Station, KAFD Metro Station designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, Al Faisaliah Tower, and JAX District.

Noor Riyadh 2025 brings together 59 artists from 24 countries to present 60 artworks (Between light & stone by Nebras Aljoaib) | all images courtesy of Noor Riyadh

from the historical center to iconic metro stations

Since its launch in 2021, Noor Riyadh has showcased over 550 artworks and welcomed more than 9.6 million visitors. It forms part of the wider Riyadh Art initiative, one of Vision 2030’s four original mega projects, which integrates public art across metro stations, parks, and civic spaces. The festival accelerates the city’s cultural visibility and supports the growth of Saudi Arabia’s creative economy through community engagement, workshops, and educational programs. The 2025 edition’s vibrant Preview Night at stc Metro Station, gathers artists, cultural leaders, and the public beneath immersive projections that ripple across the station’s polished surfaces. The event signals the festival’s ambition: to connect Riyadh’s historic core with its futuristic metro network through bold experiments in light, motion, and architecture. Executive Director Khalid Al-Hazani describes Noor Riyadh as a ‘living expression of the capital’s evolving identity, capturing the convergence of heritage and progress.’

Noor Riyadh’s six locations create distinct atmospheres, each shaped by its architectural and cultural context. In the Qasr Al Hokm District, installations engage with mudbrick geometry and traditional courtyards, generating quiet encounters with time and memory. At the King Abdulaziz Historical Center, light interacts with palm groves and heritage buildings, bathing familiar landmarks in kinetic radiance. Meanwhile, the newly opened KAFD Metro Station becomes a stage for luminous public interventions embedded in the financial district’s glass-and-steel skyline.

drone performance Synthesis by László Zsolt Bordos & Christophe Berthonneau

highlights from noor riyadh 2025

The historic Qasr Al Hokm District becomes a key site where ancient architecture interacts with contemporary light-based forms. A major highlight is James Clar’s When the Sky Reaches the Ground (2025), presented as a strikingly angular sculpture built from neon within a scaffold-like grid. The installation appears as a lightning bolt frozen mid-impact, capturing the speed of energy paused in physical form. Clar’s work reflects on communication systems, technological acceleration, and the narrative potential of suspended time.

Around the corner, Swiss collective Encor Studio introduces Sliced (2025), a corridor of perforated black textile where beams of light, sound, and drifting mist dissolve boundaries between solid space and vaporous atmosphere. Projected right onto the historic Al-Masmak Fort, Abdulrahman AlSoliman’s Place of History’s Inscription (2025) animates the artist’s cubist interpretations of Saudi ritual and geometry. The moving-image work fragments form and space, echoing the cadence of communal movement through disciplined, rhythmic abstraction. Together, all 16 installations render Qasr Al Hokm as a district where heritage architecture becomes a living collaborator.

Sliced by Encor Studio

At the King Abdulaziz Historical Center, Noor Riyadh introduces 24 immersive installations that reinterpret natural forces and celestial cycles through light and sound. Some of the highlights include Wang Yuyang’s Light, Floating Down Like a Feather (2025) that suspends fluorescent tubes in a digitally choreographed cascade, simulating the drifting motion of a feather in air. Each illuminated segment flickers with algorithmic timing while an adjacent computer generates new falling trajectories, turning physics into poetry.

Meanwhile, Belgian collective Traumnovelle presents Troppo Fiso! (2025), a seven-chapter light narrative conceived for a mud-brick courtyard. Drawing from an original long-form performance by a vinyl DJ crew, the Riyadh iteration pairs a recorded score with synesthetic light movements that crescendo into a total spatial immersion. Italian collective fuse* transforms lunar data into an enveloping visual cosmos with Luna Somnium (2025), where generative sound and projected imagery turn the hall into a drifting lunar dreamscape.

Light Float Down Like A Feather by Wang Yuyang

Renowned Japanese artist Shinji Ohmaki expands his celebrated series with Liminal Air Space-Time (2025) with thousands of fine threads suspended in shifting color gradients. Air currents animate the installation into waves of motion, turning the hall into an ephemeral architecture of drift, breath, and quiet transformation. Moreover, Saudi artist Nebras Aljoaib contributes Between Light and Stone (2025), a suspended boulder framed by luminous vertical panels. The composition creates a tension between geological weight and technological glow, echoing the balance between rooted heritage and rapid urban evolution.

With Light to Home (2025), Chinese artist Zhang Zengzeng adds a community-centered installation, using children’s drawings from Riyadh and China and reinterpreting them as glowing sculptural forms overhead, forming a canopy of collective imagination and cross-cultural collaboration. 

Liminal Air Space-Time by Shinji Ohmaki

Still within the King Abdulaziz Historical Center, Alex Schweder’s Clockwise Invitations (2025) transforms inflatable architecture into a responsive, breathing environment. Fans inflate and deflate chambers in shifting rhythms, allowing visitors to co-create the spatial choreography through movement, proximity, and presence.

All while Edwin van der Heide’s Intersections in Light and Sound (2025) brings experimental sensibilities to the district, programming lasers and audio to sculpt the air and architecture into a synesthetic field where sound becomes visible and light becomes tactile. The installation invites audiences into a dynamic perceptual encounter with the surrounding environment. Just behind it, Swiss design trio atelier oï brings its signature balance of engineering and poetry to Aura (2025), where different discs carry a subtle tint, collectively forming a gradient that shifts as light passes through. In this delicate equilibrium, every breath of wind becomes a collaborator, completing a dialogue between human creation and the natural world. 

Luna Somnium by Fuse

Within the dramatic geometry of KAFD Metro Station, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, two major public artworks enrich Noor Riyadh’s installations. Alexander Calder’s Janey Waney, a monumental kinetic sculpture, takes center stage. Its bold, colorful forms animate the concourse with shifting silhouettes, embodying Calder’s pioneering spirit in mobile and kinetic art. Nearby, Robert Indiana’s LOVE (Red Outside Blue Inside) adds a universally recognizable symbol of connection and optimism — its mirrored surfaces catching and refracting festival lights throughout the district. These permanent sculptures act as anchors for the festival’s contemporary interventions, reinforcing KAFD as a landmark where art, architecture, and motion intersect.

The 2025 edition expands this mission through diverse material languages, from drones and inflatables to lunar data and neon grids, revealing a city transformed by light, imagination, and shared experience.

The Vision Grid by Vali Chincisan

Troppo Fiso! by Traumnovelle

The new Riyadh Metro stations play a starring role in Noor Riyadh’s urban narrative. At stc Metro Station, dynamic installations interact with the station’s sharp angles and reflective materials, evoking the city’s futurist ambitions. It is here that Noor Riyadh presents one of its most technologically ambitious pairings: László Zsolt Bordos’ Synthesis (2025) and Christophe Berthonneau’s Synthesis Drone Show, curated by Richard Castelli. The station’s façade is transformed into an illusionistic, ever-shifting field of geometric light where surges of illumination make the structure appear to hover, turning its surfaces into a sculptural skin of pure energy. Overhead, Berthonneau’s synchronized drones extend the composition vertically into the sky, weaving real and virtual motion into a choreographed aerial ballet. Together, the works fuse architecture, projection mapping, and airborne choreography into a single living environment, supported by a soundscape by Czech composer Ondřej Skala.

Inside the station, dynamic and delicate kinetic installations introduce intimate counterpoints to the large-scale performance. Wu Chi-Tsung’s DUST 002 explores light as subtle atmospheric motion, channeling granular illumination across surfaces like drifting particulate, while Shun Ito’s Cosmic Birds (2023) composes orbital flocks of wire armatures and pinpoint LEDs. A former dancer, Ito brings choreographic sensitivity to the kinetic sculptures, their arcs tracing celestial rhythms that hover between model and constellation. Together with Guillaume Cousin’s ‘Le Silence des Particules (2018)’ pulse of the perfect ring of mist, Shiro Takatani’s Dumb Type ST\LL for the 3D WATER MATRIX who choreographs a symphony of animated water and light, and other fascinating works, the stc Metro Station into a nexus of scale, from monumental to microscopic, grounded in motion, precision, and light.

Dumb Type ST\LL for the 3D WATER MATRIX by Shiro Takatani

Le Silence Des Particules by Guillaume Cousin

Aura by atelier oï & WonderGlass

Intersections In Light and Sound by Edwin van der Heide

Clockwise Invitations by Alex Schweder

Dust 002 by Wu Chi-Tsung

Cosmic Birds by Shun Ito

When the Sky Reaches the Ground (a moment frozen) by James Clar

The Light To Home by Zhang Zengzeng

project info:

name: Noor Riyadh 2025 | @noorriyadhfestival

organization: Riyadh Art

curation: Mami Kataoka, Li Zhenhua, and Sara Almutlaq

dates: 20 November – 6 December, 2025

location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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DRIFT brings three new large-scale light installations to Manar Abu Dhabi, transforming Jubail Island into an illuminated landscape of shifting wind, data, and memory. Part of the outdoor festival’s second edition, running until January 4th, 2026, the works are staged within mangroves, tidal waterways, and open sky, allowing technology and environment to operate as a single system.

Across Jubail Island, the three installations introduce different modes of engagement. Whispers unfolds at ground level within the grassland, Unfold operates as an interactive AI-driven environment responding to visitors’ heartbeats, and Wind of Change expands into the sky through a 2,000-drone performance. Together, they span landscape, body, and atmosphere, using light, movement, and real-time data to examine how human presence intersects with the natural setting of the island.

all images by Arjen van Eijk, Xinix Films

whispers, unfold & wind of change explore ground, body, and sky

The Dutch duo’s contribution includes three distinct encounters. Whispers (2025) places 500 illuminated elements among wild Guinea grass, echoing its proportions and its instinctive ability to bend with the wind. Instead of towering over the landscape, each glowing tip aligns with the height of the viewer, collapsing hierarchies between artwork, environment, and human presence. As breezes move through the installation, the field responds with a rippling light pattern that feels both orchestrated and accidental, a reminder that adaptation is nature’s quiet superpower.

Unfold (2025) turns biometric data into a fleeting digital sculpture. Visitors’ heartbeats are measured in real time and translated into a shifting audio-visual display that blossoms like a character-driven flower. Every pattern, rhythm, and chromatic decision stems from the body’s internal tempo, making the artwork less a spectacle and more a moment of self-recognition. 

The most expansive work, Wind of Change (2025), animates the sky with 2,000 coordinated drones. Their flight traces invisible natural forces, wind currents, oceanic movement, and the gradual sculpting of dunes. The shapes in the sky move from abstraction toward a collective symbol, the falcon, emblem of Abu Dhabi, crossing the night before dissolving into a vortex that releases drifting seeds. The narrative lands on renewal rather than finale, imagining the city as something continuously forming rather than fixed.

DRIFT brings three new large-scale light installations to Manar Abu Dhabi

an illuminated landscape of shifting wind, data, and memory

Whispers unfolds at ground level within the grassland

each glowing tip aligns with the height of the viewer

allowing technology and environment to operate as a single system

Wind of Change expands into the sky through a 2,000-drone performance

tracing natural forces, wind currents, oceanic movement, and the gradual sculpting of dunes

the shapes in the sky move from abstraction toward a collective symbol

a vortex that releases drifting seeds

Unfold (2025) turns biometric data into a fleeting digital sculpture

Visitors’ heartbeats are measured in real time

a shifting audio-visual display that blossoms like a character-driven flower

every pattern, rhythm, and chromatic decision stems from the body’s internal tempo

a moment of self-recognition

project info:

name: Whispers (2025), Unfold (2025), Wind of Change (2025)

artist: DRIFT | @studio.drift (Lonneke Gordijn & Ralph Nauta)

location: Jubail Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE

festival: Manar Abu Dhabi 2025 | @publicartabudhabi

theme: The Light Compass

dates: November 15th, 2025 – January 4th, 2026

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For its fourth edition, Homo Faber Biennial hands the reins to Es Devlin to transform San Giorgio Maggiore into An Island of Light from September 1st to 30th, 2026. The British artist and designer will conceive 15 immersive installations, each using light to frame the work of hundreds of artisans from across the world.‘I have spent the last thirty years collaborating with musicians, choreographers, composers, librettists, playwrights and artisans. Becoming the co-author of a series of installations alongside 400 of the world’s most expert artisans in the gardens and palladian buildings of the legendary island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice is an extraordinary privilege, a great adventure,’ Devlin reflects on her role.

Devlin’s appointment follows a lineage of notable artistic directors, including Luca Guadagnino, Stefano Boeri, India Mahdavi, Judith Clark, and Robert Wilson. Known for large-scale, kinetic works that have animated museums, opera houses, stadiums, and public squares internationally, she brings a decades-long practice of collaboration with makers of every discipline. Her recent Library of Light in Milan (find designboom’s previous coverage here) drew nearly 200,000 visitors, showing how readily her installations translate into impactful public experiences.

Piscina Gandini Homo Faber 2026 | image courtesy of Es Devlin

homo faber 2026 maps global craft and live-making in venice

At Homo Faber 2026, Devlin and her team will build a sequence of spatial narratives around the labor and materials of global artisans, including ceramists, glassblowers, wood turners, paper artists, weavers, blacksmiths, embroiderers, model makers, mosaicists, and more. Their work becomes the gravitational center of each environment. Portraits, videos, poetry, and music highlight their cultural contexts, while a reconstructed workshop reveals the tools, raw materials, and techniques behind the finished objects. In three major rooms, craftspeople will demonstrate their practice live, bringing process and performance into the visitor’s field of view.

The exhibition’s mediators, 90 Young Ambassadors from design and applied-arts schools worldwide, will guide audiences through this landscape of light, gesture, and material intelligence. The ensemble of installations examines what the British artist describes as the ‘fundamental relationship between light, materials, and labor.’

Library of Light | image by Monica Spezia

open studios, demonstrations, and cultural events

The Michelangelo Foundation, which curates the biennial, frames the theme as an embodiment of its core values. As vice president Hanneli Rupert notes, Devlin is ‘herself an incredible craftswoman, capable of conjuring entire worlds from nothing,’ while executive director Alberto Cavalli emphasizes that ‘the theme chosen for the fourth edition… embodies the ethic that guides our every action: to give visibility to the original, conscious, and noble gestures of artisans… and to inspire a new generation of creators.’

Beyond the main exhibition, Homo Faber 2026 will expand across Venice through Homo Faber in Città, inviting visitors into artisan workshops listed on the Homo Faber Guide and staging additional exhibitions on the city’s craft heritage. Throughout September, the biennial will also host demonstrations, participatory workshops, and culinary experiences that deepen engagement with the practices on display. The complete program will be announced in due course, with ticket sales opening in April 2026.

Surfacing (2024) by Es Devlin, a BMW-commission light and water installation at Art Basel 2024 | image by Lucy Emms

Congregation | image by Daniel Devlin

image by Jason Ardizzone-West courtesy of Es Devlin

Es Devlin | image ©Victor Picon

project info:

event: Homo Faber Biennial 2026 | @homofaber

theme: An Island of Light

artistic director: Es Devlin | @esdevlin

location: Fondazione Giorgio Cini | @fondazionecini, San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

dates: September 1st–30th, 2026

curated by: Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship 

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The world’s largest festival of light and art, Noor Riyadh, dazzles the Saudi capital from November 20 to December 6, 2025, elevating everyday spaces into extraordinary encounters. The festival brings together an inspiring roster of 59 international artists from 24 countries, including a vibrant mix of leading global names and pioneering Saudi talents, to explore the city’s rapid transformation through the mesmerizing medium of light. 

from November 20-December 6, Noor Riyadh, dazzles the Saudi capital (Liminal Air Space-Time by Shinji Ohmaki) | all images courtesy of Noor Riyadh

noor riyadh in the blink of an eye

Titled ‘In the Blink of an Eye,’ the 2025 edition of Noor Riyadh reflects the quickening pace of change that is shaping Saudi Arabia’s capital city. Organized under the umbrella of the Royal Commission for Riyadh City and Riyadh Art, it features a spectacular lineup of 60 artworks, including more than 35 new commissions created specifically for the event. The festival also pays a poignant special tribute to the late Safeya Binzagr (1940–2024), an icon of Saudi modernism and the first Saudi female artist to host a solo exhibition back in 1968.

This exclusive program unveils installations that play with light’s fundamental properties: Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto presents a luminous, site-specific iteration of his iconic Third Paradise, reflecting harmony and unity within the Qasr Al Hokm District. Meanwhile, Kuwaiti conceptual artist Monira Al Qadiri’s commission features her signature iridescent, oil-drop forms, using dazzling light to explore themes of abundance and extraction at a major public location. James Clar’s work at the KAFD Metro Station utilizes custom LED arrays to create a perception-altering, tunnel-like experience, while Ivana Franke’s installation employs semi-transparent screens and carefully orchestrated light pulses to challenge spatial awareness and depth perception, creating an immersive optical result.

the festival brings together an inspiring roster of 59 international artists from 24 countries (Sliced by Encor Studio)

59 artists respond to riyadh’s pulse

This grand celebration of creativity, light, and movement showcases how art can capture the very momentum of a city. The curatorial vision connects Riyadh’s historical heart to its futuristic vision, inviting audiences to encounter light as a medium for perception, memory, and momentum. Led by an international team – featuring Mami Kataoka (Curatorial Advisory Lead; Director, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), Riyadh-based curator Sara Almutlaq, and Li Zhenhua (Curator and founder of Beijing Art Lab) – the program integrates the installations across six key locations. From the historical Qasr Al Hokm District and King Abdulaziz Historical Center to the modern marvels of stc Metro Station and KAFD Metro Station, alongside Al Faisaliah Tower and JAX District, Noor Riyadh seamlessly weaves itself into the city’s evolving urban fabric.

Festival Director Nouf Almoneef notes, ‘Each work captures the city’s momentum through light, reminding us that creativity is a universal language that connects cultures and inspires dialogue.‘

It reminds audiences of the power of art. The festival transforms normal public spaces into dazzling, shared wonders, echoing Riyadh Art’s mission to enrich daily lives through creativity and collective experience.

the festival features a spectacular lineup of 60 artworks, including more than 35 new commissions created specifically for the event

the curatorial vision connects Riyadh’s historical heart to its futuristic vision, inviting audiences to encounter light as a medium for perception, memory, and momentum (The Light To Home by Zhang Zengzeng)

led by an international, team Noor Riyadh integrates the installations across six key locations (Place of History by Abdulrahman AlSoliman)

Scenes of a Matrimony by Safeya Binzagr set in the historical center of Riyadh

project info:

name: Noor Riyadh 2025 | @noorriyadhfestival

organization: Riyadh Art

curation: Mami Kataoka, Li Zhenhua, and Sara Almutlaq

dates: 20 November – 6 December, 2025

location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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Osmanthus Moon is a temporary public art installation by HCCH Studio, created to mark the traditional Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. The project references the osmanthus flower, an emblematic plant associated with the season, and establishes a dialogue with the action paintings of a folk Zao Hua (stove flower) artist, a practice recognized as an element of intangible cultural heritage.

Located on the semicircular lawn of Century Park in Shanghai, the pavilion takes the form of a translucent dome reminiscent of a full moon. Its structural framework integrates stylized osmanthus motifs into a bronze lattice resembling intertwined vines. A lightweight, elastic fabric is stretched across the framework, forming a continuous, illuminated surface. The resulting form explores the intersection of traditional patterning and contemporary construction methods.

all images by Guowei Liu, PSA

Osmanthus Moon explores geometry, illumination, and heritage

The design references the ornamental language of the Vienna Secession while drawing on the geometric clarity of Buckminster Fuller’s domes. On the ground, the Zao Hua artist’s painted osmanthus patterns correspond to the bronze framework above, establishing a spatial and visual relationship between movement and structure, craftsmanship and fabrication.

Visitors enter through two irregular openings that lead to an enclosed interior space. During the day, filtered daylight produces a diffused glow across the fabric surface, creating a soft, evenly lit environment. At night, internal illumination transforms the pavilion into a semi-transparent volume defined by shifting shadows and gradients of light. Commissioned to Shanghai-based practice HCCH Studio by the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, Osmanthus Moon was presented as a twelve-day installation, serving as both a seasonal observance and an exploration of the relationship between natural motifs, material technology, and cultural continuity.

Osmanthus Moon by HCCH Studio celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival through architecture and light

the installation reinterprets the osmanthus flower, a seasonal symbol of autumn in Chinese culture

the pavilion’s translucent form evokes the appearance of a glowing full moon

a bronze lattice weaves stylized osmanthus motifs into an intricate structural framework

interlaced patterns resemble vines, merging organic imagery with architectural geometry

lightweight elastic fabric stretches over the bronze frame to form a luminous surface

by day, filtered sunlight produces a soft, evenly diffused interior glow

painted osmanthus motifs on the ground echo the bronze framework above

located in Century Park, Shanghai, the dome rests on a semicircular lawn like a descending moon

by night, internal lighting transforms the dome into a semi-transparent sphere of light

shadows and gradients animate the fabric surface as the light conditions shift

the project reflects HCCH Studio’s exploration of cultural continuity through material and form

Osmanthus Moon connects contemporary design with the heritage of Zao Hua, or stove flower painting

project info:

name: Osmanthus Moon

architect: HCCH Studio | @hcchstudio

design team: Hao Chen, Chenchen Hu, Feng Qi

client: Power Station of Art Shanghai

light consultant: ADA Lighting

contractor: Art ZHOU

dimensions: D7.2m; H3.6m

location: Century Park, Shanghai, China

photographer: Guowei Liu, PSA

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

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