Lights in the city: Jacopozzi and the architecture of the night

“And so this year we can admire a Gargantuan feast, a jungle vision worthy of Kipling, the arrival of Father Christmas, an Arctic fishing expedition — and, lest anything be missing from these parades, one of them even treats us to a live orchestra.”

— L’Illustration, 19 December 1931

This urban spectacle had become, since the mid-1920s, an annual tradition, drawing crowds after dark across generations. It also sparked fierce competition between Paris’s department stores, each seeking the most impressive display to build their reputation — storks bringing toys, Hercules or Gulliver, were among the luminous tableaux that lodged most firmly in the public memory.

The press bore witness to this enthusiasm, whose chief promoter was Fernand Jacopozzi, recognised for his talent by appointment as Commander of the Légion d’honneur in 1932. Nicknamed “the Magician of Light”, he exemplified a generation of young electrician-publicists who helped to “spectacularise” the street through an original use of electricity.

The architecture of the night

Against the backdrop of the expression “architecture of the night” — coined in 1930 by American architect Raymond Hood — a new European debate was emerging about the relationship between architecture and electricity, fuelled by the growth of illuminated advertising.

As early as 1927, Walter Kurt Behrendt had explored the possibilities offered by electric light in architecture. Hugo Häring was among the first to define the architectural potential of illuminated advertising, predicting that the nocturnal appearance of buildings would soon matter more than their daytime face: “Advertising is about to replace the architecture.”

Magic and wonder

The Christmas displays of the grands magasins were part of this wider movement, yet distinct from it. As electricity began to lose its novelty, Jacopozzi’s hand prolonged its magical character for a few more years — all the more so because Christmas was the season most hospitable to that sense of the marvellous.

Thirty metres high, entire scenes came alive: hundreds of coloured bulbs lighting and extinguishing in precisely choreographed sequences, creating movement, transformation, apparition. All without computers, without automated programming — only electricity, wire, and the genius of a man who drew with light.

“He drew with light… what a gift he had.”

— Véronique Tessier Huort Jacopozzi, granddaughter

Sources

• Cabantous, Alain; Walter, François, Noël, une si longue histoire…, Paris: Payot, 2016
• Neumann, Dietrich, Architecture of the Night: The illuminated building, Munich: Prestel, 2002
• Sabatès, Fabien, Jacopozzi, le Magicien de la lumière, Éditions Douin, 2017