Fragile Cloud: 100,000 Illuminated Balloons Fill Indoor Market

Pulsing with light and life, this incredible art installation provides Covent Garden, a glass-topped marketplace, with a kind of artificial interior skyscape. Created for the London Design Festival, you can watch a time-lapse video of its construction below.

cloud art architecture detail

The ‘Invasions’ of Charles Pétillon are well known for popping up in cramped spaces, photographed, then removed, but this project is scaled far larger than his conventional pieces, is much more public and is also his first work outside of France.

cloud art white balloons

cloud art light night

Over 100 feet long, this amorphous cloud organically weaves its way through a realm of historical brick and metal detail, a shockingly light, bright and fragile intrusion into a sharp-cornered combination of architecture and engineering.

cloud art from above

cloud art amorphous project

cloud art viewers

“The balloon invasions I create are metaphors”, explains Charles Pétillon. “their goal is to change the way in which we see the things we live alongside each day without really noticing them. with ‘heartbeat’ I want to represent the market building as the beating heart of this area – connecting its past with the present day to allow visitors to re-examine its role at the heart of london’s life.”