A nocturnal roof garden for spectacles. The Luminous Ship by Carles Buïgas

The Luminous Ship was an unbuilt project by the Catalan engineer Carles Buïgas, conceived in 1930 and reformulated several times until the year before his death in 1979. It consisted of a floating universal exhibition that was to travel around the world, with a large luminous garden on its deck with a synchronized display of water, light, color, perfume, and music. For Buïgas, this idea was more than just an engineering project. To ‘climb’ onto the deck of this ship, bringing the Good News of Salvation, meant for him entering a paradise on earth, materialized as a garden of luminous water. If the ship was the 20th century's utopian image of the architecture, the paradisiacal deck of this nocturnal ship was the utopia of an engineer convinced that he could improve humanity only by means of water, light and music.