The International Day of Light celebrates the role light plays in science, culture and art, education, and sustainable development, and in fields as diverse as medicine, communications, and energy. The celebration will allow many different sectors of society worldwide to participate in activities that demonstrates how science, technology, art and culture can help achieve the goals of UNESCO – building the foundation for peaceful societies.

The International Day of Light is celebrated on 16 May each year, the anniversary of the first successful operation of the laser in 1960 by physicist and engineer, Theodore Maiman. This day is a call to strengthen scientific cooperation and harness its potential to foster peace and sustainable development. 

 

Light plays a central role in our lives. On the most fundamental level, through photosynthesis, light is at the origin of life itself. The study of light has led to promising alternative energy sources, lifesaving medical advances in diagnostics technology and treatments, light-speed internet and many other discoveries that have revolutionized society and shaped our understanding of the universe. These technologies were developed through centuries of fundamental research on the properties of light – starting with Ibn Al-Haytham’s seminal work, Kitab al-Manazir (Book of Optics), published in 1015 and including Einstein’s work at the beginning of the 20th century, which changed the way we think about time and light.

 

Croatia is the homeland of two scientists whose reflections and actions are indispensable in fundamental research on the properties of light - Ruđer Josip Bošković in the area of optics and Nikola Tesla who showed all types of light sources and light effects and thus hit the foundations of Luminiscent light sources.

 

International Day of Light in Croatia will take place in the Oris House of Architecture in Zagreb on Friday, 17th May, starting at 4:30 pm.

 

Program is based on presentation of four „chapters“: 

   

LEGENDS OF THE LIGHT – two centuries of 48 lighthouses, almost forgotten phenomenon on croatian coast of Mediterrannean | Adriatic treasure of heritage in Europe.

 

Teslina Munjara | TESLA's LIGHTNING little hydropower plant in Ozalj, Croatia – after Niagara U.S.A and Sibenik, Croatia, third in the world by Tesla's patent and by his direct approval: From the opening day continuously in operation 111 years, today as it was on the first day.

 

THE HOME & HOMELAND OF NIKOLA TESLA <> Nikola Tesla Experience Centre Project: Where Nikola became a Tesla – A little known history of how one professor made Tesla's life fall in love with electrical engineering – School of Tesla's first and greatest love in Karlovac, Croatia.

 

GREETINGS TO THE SUN in Zadar. The Sea Organ has become a modern icon of the city – this is a unique architectural miracle built in the underwater part of the city quay. The currents of waves and their passage through musical pipes installed beneath the surface of the sea create an amazing sound, the so-called sea music, filling the large space of the seaside promenade. 

The same architect, Nikola Bašić, takes credit for the Greeting to the Sun, situated right at the top of Zadar peninsula. The Greeting to the Sun consists of three hundred multilayer glass plates installed at the same level as the stone paving of the quay in the shape of a circle 22 meters in diameter. It is conceived as a spatial installation in the shape of an amphitheater surrounded by stone blocks with a presentation of all Solar System planets and their orbits.

According to the famous Alfred Hitchcock, this part of the Zadar quay provides a view of the most beautiful sunset in the world.

 

οἰκουμένη | oecumene in Rijeka – is a stylized spiral composition that makes the central circular space for a contemplative encounter with the primal light. 

It is a circular space approximately 10 meters in diameter, divided into two hemispherical areas, the one in the semi-darkness from which basic, according to Nikola Bašić, focuses on light and the light emitted from space infinity.

Chapel for all people of the world in Rijeka 2020 European Capital of Culture.

 

CONSECRATION by Bruno Gamulin

*   Consecration of the Place (1989), which uses architecture to show how to translate signs of time into spatial relations. The film won the UNESCO "Golden Award" in France. 

*   Number from Light, short artistic docu film about poetry of light inside the smallest cathedral in the world Pre-Romanesque Catholic church originating from the 9th century in Nin. According to a theory from an art historian Mladen Pejakovic, the design has an intentionally unbalanced elliptical form designated to follow the position of the Sun, retaining the functionality of a calendar and sundial.

 

Matej Mestrovic – Let It Be Light… music interventions in „matejana“ style.