2026 New Taipei Riverside Butterfly Festival

About The Entry

Dancing Among Blossoms – Shaping the Riverside, Illuminating the City

By day, riverside parks provide ecological education, recreation, and natural landscapes for the community. After sunset, however, limited lighting often reduces their accessibility and weakens their role as vibrant public spaces. Dancing Among Blossoms, created for the 2026 New Taipei Riverside Butterfly Festival, reimagined how landscape lighting can transform a riverside park into a lively nighttime destination where nature, people, and the city reconnect through light.

Inspired by Taiwan's native Broad-tailed Swallowtail Butterfly, this project’s unified design language translated the butterfly's wings, patterns, and graceful movement into sculptural lighting, landscape composition, and visitor circulation. Layered illumination, carefully balanced color temperatures, and dynamic lighting rhythms guided visitors through the site, making light both a visual element and a storytelling medium shaping movement, atmosphere, and emotional engagement.

Celebrated during the Mother's Day period and coinciding with Pompompurin's 30th Anniversary, festive elements were seamlessly integrated into the lighting experience, not merely isolated attractions. A butterfly-inspired LED gateway welcomed visitors into illuminated hot-air balloon installations, while a sustainable birthday cake constructed from reusable straw and a giant glowing Pompompurin sculpture created memorable gathering spaces. Cosmos flower fields, interactive postcard frames, and thousands of twinkling lights further enriched the experience, transforming every pathway into an immersive nighttime journey.

Sustainability was a design fundamental. The project incorporated high-efficiency LED lighting, intelligent lighting controls, reusable fixtures, and layered lighting strategies to achieve visual impact while improving energy efficiency and enhancing the comfort of the nighttime environment.

Beyond creating a seasonal event, Dancing Among Blossoms demonstrated how landscape lighting can regenerate public space. During its two-week exhibition, the festival attracted more than 80,000 visitors, generated unprecedented attendance, extended nighttime use of the riverside park, and stimulated surrounding commercial activity. More importantly, it presented a replicable model for integrating landscape lighting, ecological awareness, public space activation, and cultural tourism.

“Light should never overpower nature—it should reveal it.” Through thoughtful lighting design, this project reshaped the relationship between people, nature, and the city, transforming the riverside into a memorable nighttime destination celebrating both environmental beauty and urban vitality.