Text by Natalie White | Photos by William Lai

i Light Marina Bay returns this Friday to set the bay aglow with 20 sustainable light art installations taking centrestage at the Marina Bay waterfront.

Held from 3 to 26 March, i Light Marina Bay has become an illuminated attraction with a showcase of light art installations created by artists from Singapore and around the world.

Installed around the Marina Bay waterfront, the light art installations are designed with energy-saving lighting or environmentally-friendly materials to reinforce Marina Bay's position as a sustainable precinct and serve as reminders to encourage festival goers and the general public to adopt sustainable habits in their everyday lives.

The fifth edition of Asia's leading sustainable light art festival will also feature, for the first time, three themed festival hubs that will create a festive atmosphere and experience. These includeArt-Zoo for imaginative play, The Fantastical World of eco.me for sustainability-themed activities and Gastrobeats for food and music.

Art-Zoo, a festival hub at The Float @ Marina Bay, will house 11 larger-than-life inflatable art installations in a giant play-garden. With plants, animals, to ecosystems that represent different letters of the alphabet, Art-Zoo explores nature through the perspective of art in an imaginative landscape. Manoeuvre through a Giraffe maze to walking through the belly of a whale or taking pictures with a towering spider, this interactive and visual adventure promises great fun for the young and the young-at-heart while learning more about wildlife and creating a sustainable world.

Sustainable Initiatives

Visitors are encourage to participate in  annual Switch Off, Turn Up campaign that will see participating buildings and organisations switch off non-essential lighting and turn up air-conditioning temperatures throughout the festival period. The resulting energy savings will help to offset the power consumption of the light art installations at the festival.

To further encourage the public to adopt sustainable habits, the festival will switch off the light art installations and join the rest of Singapore in the one-hour lights out event during Earth Hour on 25 March, 8.30pm to 9.30pm.

Festival goers can also participate in other complementary partner programmes, such as exchanging their incandescent light bulbs for energy-saving LED bulbs through Philips Lighting’s Gift of Light LED light bulb exchange programme.

About Marina Bay

Located at the Southern tip of Singapore, Marina Bay is a 360ha waterfront development ome to the Merlion, integrated resort Marina Bay Sands and many other attractions and public spaces, and designed to seamlessly extend Singapore's central business district and further support the city-state's continuing growth as a major business and financial hub in Asia.