16 days in 2016

Over 1,200,000 people visited Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Floa­ting Piers during its 16 days from June 18 through July 3, 2016. The tempo­rary work of art featured fabric-covered piers 3 kilo­me­ters in length, cons­tructed across the water of Italy’s Lake Iseo, and continued along 2.5 kilo­me­ters of pede­strian streets in Sulzano and Pesc­hiera Maraglio.

The Floa­ting Piers was first conceived in 1970. Christo and Jeanne-Claude later found Lake Iseo to be the most inspi­ring loca­tion to realize this project. The lake’s water, the land­scape, and the commu­ni­ties around it have all been part of The Floa­ting Piers. An important part of this project is the tempo­rary part, it has a nomadic quality – this is why after 16 days it was gone.

Free and accessible

The Floa­ting Piers were free and acces­sible to the public, no tickets or reser­va­tions were required. Local autho­ri­ties requested The Floa­ting Piers close at night to accom­mo­date the commu­nity of Monte Isola’s sani­ta­tion needs. On average over 72,000 people a day from around the world expe­ri­enced The Floa­ting Piers and explored the hosting commu­ni­ties around Lake Iseo, which offered food and drinks, and places for hikes where visi­tors could take in diffe­rent vantage points of the piers.

“Monte Isola was ‘Caput Mundi’ [Capital of the World] for 16 days,” said Fiorello Turla, Mayor of Monte Isola. “I was there, I’ve been part of this incre­dible event that was The Floa­ting Piers.

Hotels, restau­rants, bars, and shops recorded asto­nis­hing atten­dance, and images of Lake Iseo were broad­cast on the major inter­na­tional networks. For the small island it’s been a chall­enge people enthu­si­a­sti­cally met as this expe­ri­ence will have lasting impact on the future of the tourist industry of the area.

Success and perspectives

“The Floa­ting Piers has been a great success, despite any doubt,” said Giuseppe Facca­noni, Presi­dent of Lake Basin Autho­rity, “but the most inte­res­ting thing is that it provided new perspec­tives for inha­bi­tants around the lake. It allowed us to redis­cover our surroun­dings and the value of the lake’s inner beauty, which can some­times be unde­re­sti­mated.”

“The Lake Iseo area hosted over a million visi­tors, offe­ring an unfor­gettable artistic expe­ri­ence and allo­wing people to learn about a hidden corner of Italy,” said Paola Pezzotti, Mayor of Sulzano. “We have been at the center of a contem­po­rary artistic expe­ri­ence and the inter­na­tional tourist circuit. The atten­dance of visi­tors and all the invest­ments brought by The Floa­ting Piers bene­fits our local economy and will enable even broader social and tourist deve­lo­p­ment in years to come.”

Christo financed the entire cost of The Floa­ting Piers, appro­xi­m­ately 18,000,000 Euros, inclu­ding the assembly, instal­la­tion, main­ten­ance, secu­rity, and removal of the work of art. The artist does not accept spon­sor­ship. The total includes planned support for local govern­ment agen­cies and host commu­ni­ties in the Lombardy Region, tota­ling 1,500,000 Euros. This funding covered services such as police, ambu­lances and fire personnel and for instal­la­tion of tele­com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the nearby tunnels. It also included conces­sion fees for use of Lake Iseo and the commu­ni­ties of Sulzano and Monte Isola. Addi­tio­nally during the project, Christo paid for extra garbage removal, portable toilets, and other sani­ta­tion assis­tance for the surroun­ding area.

Over 1,000 people were employed by The Floa­ting Piers. All project workers were paid, there were no volun­teers, inclu­ding manu­fac­tu­rers, engi­neers, buil­ding contrac­tors, divers, pier moni­tors, life­guards, boat captains, and secu­rity personnel. The majo­rity of the moni­tors, which provided round-the-clock coverage on the piers, were local Italian resi­dents from the Lombardy region.

Materials and Removal

Removal of The Floa­ting Piers began July 4, and mate­rials will be indus­tri­ally recy­cled for use in a variety of appli­ca­tions. The recy­cling involves several diffe­rent proces­sing methods, and will take place at various loca­tions in Europe. All compon­ents of The Floa­ting Piers should have been removed over the course of three months, leaving Lake Iseo as if we were never here.”

The Floa­ting Piers included:

• 220,000 high-density poly­ethy­lene cubes and pins, manu­fac­tured by four diffe­rent compa­nies in Nort­hern Italy, used to create a modular floa­ting dock system on Lake Iseo. The cubes will be re-granu­lated onsite and the mate­rial will be re-used in the plas­tics industry.
• 100,000 square meters of nylon fabric and 80,000 square meters of felt, from three compa­nies in Germany, to cover 3 kilo­me­ters over the piers on water and 2.5 kilo­me­ters of pede­strian streets. The yellow-dahlia fabric as well as the felt underlay will be re-manu­fac­tured and used in the produc­tion of new fabric products. The fabric may also be ground into a filler and used in such products as carpet under­lay­ment.
• 200 concrete dead-weight anchors, weig­hing 5.5 tons each, speci­fi­cally desi­gned for the project. The anchors, used under water to hold the piers in place, will all be carefully removed from the lakebed and milled/shredded for filler and indus­trial re-use.

“A part of the project that visi­tors never saw is the unique and incre­dible ancho­ring system beneath the piers desi­gned by Rosen Jeliazkov,” said Christo. “Rosen and his team have been with us since the start of this project, helping us to realize this very tech­nical and essen­tial aspect of The Floa­ting Piers. I want to thank ever­yone who worked on The Floa­ting Piers—we could not have done it without so many experts and specia­lists.”