Light Wells, Centralsjukhuset Karlstad

The first well holds large eggs. In the second, newly hatched birds rest on branches. The third is filled with some sixty glass birds in flight, blown at Kosta Boda with tiny air bubbles trapped in the material so the light catches and holds inside the glass. In the fourth, wide-winged birds in acrylic move their wings slowly, strong enough to choose their own direction and pace.

Everything is lit with fibre optics, a technique Lervik has worked with for years and which gives glass and acrylic a depth that conventional light sources cannot. The wells are at their most alive after dark.

The brief demanded restraint. Nothing in the building may agitate the people who live with it every day. Early ideas involving quickly shifting colours were set aside, and the largest birds — first drawn as sea eagles — were redrawn when their raptor silhouette read as threatening. What hovers in the well today is calmer and more gull-like: presence without pressure.

Client: Landstinget i Värmland. Glass produced by Kosta Boda.