Last week my friends Bob and Chris­t­ian gave a new sil­hou­ette to cologne, by means of illu­mi­nat­ing the tele­vi­sion tower with a spec­tac­u­lar lighten moved dress.

Up to the 1980s the con­struc­tion of a tele­vi­sion tower was a matter of course for many German cities to under­line their urban char­ac­ter. Cologne is no excep­tion: The local Colo­nius was designed by Erwin Heinle and was fin­ished in 1981. With a height of 266 meters it is not only the high­est tele­vi­sion tower in Nordrhine-​Westfalia, but also a strik­ing land­mark that is vis­i­ble from far. As such, it is an inher­ent part of Cologne’s sky­line by day and night. Unfor­tu­nately its sig­nif­i­cance as a tourist des­ti­na­tion has been lost since the clo­sure of the obser­va­tion plat­form sev­eral years ago.
The archi­tects Chris­t­ian Dieck­mann and Robert Wet­zels want to re-​raise the aware­ness for the sig­nif­i­cance of the dis­tinc­tive build­ing for the cityscape of Cologne:

An exhi­bi­tion in the ele­vated ground level doc­u­ments the devel­op­ment of the tele­vi­sion tower and gives exten­sive back­ground infor­ma­tion. More­over the panorama view that would be vis­i­ble from the obser­va­tion plat­form (when open to the public) is repli­cated by means of print­able film on the base­ment win­dows, and selected archi­tec­ture and urban devel­op­ment projects are expli­cated in the “Schaufen­ster zur Stadt”. At “Liegen unterm Turm” at the bottom of the Colo­nius vis­i­tors can savour coffee and cake and enjoy the tele­vi­sion tower from a dis­tinct angle. But the most spec­tac­u­lar event is the artful illu­mi­na­tion of the tower. By illu­mi­nat­ing its column the Colo­nius is trans­formed into a giant sculp­ture that is thus pro­moted to a high­light of Cologne’s nightly sky­line during plan08.

Dieckmann’s and Wetzels’s and vision is to estab­lish a com­pe­ti­tion in the future: the Colo­nius Award. Inter­na­tional artist and design­ers shall be asked yearly to hand in their pro­posal for an illu­mi­na­tion of the Colo­nius. The illu­mi­na­tion of the tele­vi­sion tower during plan08 is made pos­si­ble by Stadt Köln, Deutsche Funk­turm GmbH and Deutsche Telekom AG.