Luminarium creator Alan Parkinson is creating immersive experiences in Nottingham and beyond
The Architects of Air founder has been inventing for over 35 years
Nottingham has been home to so many wonderful inventions – and the Architects of Air’s Luminariums are among these.
We spoke with founder Alan Parkinson about how the structures took shape, what the design process is like, and what to expect from Luminarium Timisien, which is at Lakeside Arts from May 23-31 (lakesidearts.org.uk).
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Luminarium creator Alan Parkinson is creating immersive experiences in Nottingham and beyond
By Eve Smallman
In this world, it can be difficult to find something that is a completely unique experience – but the Architect of Air’s Luminariums are certainly just that. The colourful inflatable structures have toured everywhere from Australia to America – but they’re hand-built here in Nottingham, and they originated here too.
They’re masterminded by Alan Parkinson, who came to Nottingham in the 1980s as a photography student at Trent Polytechnic. It was here that he took on a part-time job – one that you might not think would capture the imagination, but certainly did. “I worked for the probation service, driving a minibus with offenders who had to do their punishments in the community,” he explains. “Their project was to take an air bed that had been made before I joined the project, and take it out to after-school groups, inner city place schemes, and to special schools and centres for adults with day centres for adults with special needs.”
With the encouragement from the probation service, he extended his role, and the project grew to be a full time job over a period of approximately 10 years. By 1992, they had evolved the air bed into two or three structures that people could go inside for an experience of light and colour. “The third structure was one that was a collaboration with a theatre company from Loughborough and a day centre for adults with special needs – that was collaborative in design because it was intended to be a performance space, and we toured that around the country.”
While the project folded in 1992 as it was no longer able to continue as a charity, Alan bought off the project and the last structure built, and began to tour it himself as the first Architect of Air. “It was a bit of a challenge to find work for a big structure and something almost impossible to frame in a way that would make sense to most people, and also, because my starting point was not from doing it out of an art context.”
Alan wasn’t claiming the work to be art, nor it a play area either. “I was just purely trying to sell the work and on its own merits in terms of how popular it was for people and how people liked it.” They certainly do – over 20 years later, and they have been explored by thousands of people across the globe.
Each new structure is a variation on a theme. “They are all ever trying to create an ideal frame for the phenomenon of light and the beauty of colour,” Alan says. While different ones have been built, the core elements largely remain the same. “It’s always about building a scale where you have the opportunity to get lost and to lose yourself – so that kind of labyrinthine aspect is unchanging,” Alan explains. “The experience of the surprising radiance has become more refined, certainly than in the earlier days, as I couldn’t afford to get the plastic colour qualities that I wanted.”
With it being such a unique experience, Alan often finds people struggle to describe it. “People want to try and put it into words and struggle to find ways to do so – but I think you have to be curious to go into that kind of structure,” says Alan. “They slow down, and the space encourages them to become more reflective – it also very much encourages connection and shared experience when visiting with people, while as an individual going on, some people find it spiritual and get quite touched and moved.”
The latest structure for Lakeside Arts is Luminarium Timsien, which was originally built for the Romanian city of Timișoara’s European Capital of Culture celebrations in 2020 (it did make it there eventually, in 2024). “It is a relatively big structure compared to some of the preceding ones – all the structures that preceded it had always been domes connected by tunnels, whereas Timisien is part of a cycle of four,” Alan explains.
He continues, “It’s basically a collection of high domes that are connected into almost like a grid, and then we’ve got one higher dome that has got a pattern inspired by Gaudí’s dome ceiling with a little point of light,” says Alan. The main dome has an unusual pattern inspired by Islamic architecture and design, which he loves. “I like working with patterns like that, because I think when you look at them, the mind tries to organise them or to understand their organisation – and I think that can take you into a little bit of a meditative space.”
Alan says that structures like Timisien are more monolithic and, in a way, less commercially practical, because the advantage of the domes connected by tunnels was that they could be configured. This can make it difficult to set up in city squares and car parks. However, the beauty of being at Lakeside is that it’s a site with no restrictions.
Being here also means that they’re able to get comparative feedback from visitors, as it’s one site that the Architects of Air consistently revisit. “We have people come in year after year, and then we have their children, which is so nice,” Alan explains. They will also remember the one they’ve been to previously. “I think the structure we brought last year, Myriad, fell short of expectations – it fell a bit short of mine as well – but it’s good to have that feedback that’s unique to Lakeside.”
Wondering why you should visit? Having been to Luminariums myself in the past, Alan asks me what I would say when I pose this question, and I say to go in with an open mind. “I think you’re so right,” he says. “I agonise a bit about not being a salesperson, but I think one thing that is worthwhile for a human to experience is a sense of their own being that comes through a sense of wonder – whether an amazing sky, a murmuration of starlings, or just something that is just kind of wow and that makes you feel like you’re alive.”
However, Alan doesn’t want to tell people to come with a sense of wonder. “If you tell somebody to come here and they will have that, and they go in and don’t experience that, you don’t want them to be disappointed,” he finishes by saying. “I would just agree… I would like people to come with an open mind.” Whether you’re going with family, friends, or simply by yourself, this is the way to truly embrace what the Luminariums have to offer.
Luminarium: Timisien is at Lakeside Arts from May 23-31. lakesidearts.org.uk
architects-of-air.com
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