The Night Sky in Philadelphia

Turning on the lights in Philadelphia isn't as easy as it looks.

This weekend's lighting of the old visitor center in Love Park was supposed to be the highlight of DesignPhiladelphia, but it was a big ho-hum, and a major let-down considering it was designed by Klip/Collective, a well-regarded, Philadelphia-based video producer. Klip/Collective came up with the clever idea of turning the cylindrical visitors center into an inside-out Imax theater. The idea was to celebrate Philadelphia's design talent, add a little sparkle to the Philadelphia nightscape, and call attention to the neglected building, which is looking more and more like a disabled spaceship. But the three-minute video loop, which included images based on Eadweard Muybridge's motion studies with Thomas Eakins, was dull and lifeless. For a project that was meant to show Philadelphia how to put on some nighttime glitter, the lights weren't nearly bright enough. By the time you crossed 15th Street you could hardly make them out.

Philadelphia just can't seem to turn itself into the City of Lights, no matter how hard it tries. Take the Cira Center. You have to give the architects at Cesar Pelli's firm credit for trying something different. They dotted the facade of the iceberg-shaped tower with LEDs, instead of going the standard route of lighting the building's crown. The dot matrix might have worked - if there were no people inside to turn on the interior lights or mess with the shades. But, as with most occupied buildings, there are human beings behind those glass walls. Everytime I look at the grid of colored lights, I can't help but think that someone forgot to turn off the construction lights after the building was finished.

The LEDs installed on Boathouse Row have also been disappointing, but for different reasons. They're too perfect - like dentures. Yes, there are no more big gaps, the way there were when the row was lit with incandescent bulbs. But there is no fairyland twinkle anymore, either. It was the simple naivete of the old light bulbs that made Boathouse Row's lighting so charming. Maybe once that twinkle fades in my memory, I'll develop a fondness for the Morse code of LEDs.

And maybe once some of the searchlights ringing City Hall start to burn out, I'll also come to appreciate the eye-searing brightness they cast on City Hall. So far, the lighting project still makes me think of a crime scene. But last winter's colorizing of City Hall's central portal was one of Philadelphia's few recent lighting successes. The color lasted just a month, but it was fun to see the Second-Empire behemoth reimagined as a Victorian tart. Sure, it wasn't as a conceptual and cutting edge as Klip/Collective's treatment of the spaceship, but the saturated, eye-popping colors got you to see the building in a whole new light. Which is all any good architectural lighting job should do.