page_title: Crown Fountain
section_title: Artistic design
hierarchical_section_title: Crown Fountain / Concept and design / Artistic design
caption_attribution_description: English: Crown Fountain, Millenium Park, from overhead
context_page_description: Crown Fountain is an interactive work of public art and video sculpture featured in Chicago's Millennium Park, which is located in the Loop community area. Designed by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa and executed by Krueck and Sexton Architects, it opened in July 2004. The fountain is composed of a black granite reflecting pool placed between a pair of glass brick towers. The towers are 50 feet tall, and they use light-emitting diodes to display digital videos on their inward faces. Construction and design of the Crown Fountain cost $17 million. The water operates from May to October, intermittently cascading down the two towers and spouting through a nozzle on each tower's front face.
  Residents and critics have praised the fountain for its artistic and entertainment features. It highlights Plensa's themes of dualism, light, and water, extending the use of video technology from his prior works. Its use of water is unique among Chicago's many fountains, in that it promotes physical interaction between the public and the water. Both the fountain and Millennium Park are highly accessible because of their universal design.
context_section_description: Prior to Crown Fountain, Plensa's dominant theme had been dualism, which he had expanded to artworks in which the viewers are outside, and the visible subjects of the art are inside containers and hollow spaces.  In the 1990s, he completed several outdoor sculptures in which he explored the use of light (The Star of David (1998) at Stockholm's Raoul Wallenberg Square, Bridge of Light (1998) in Jerusalem), and  LED technology, video, and computer design (Gläserne Seele & Mr. Net in Brandenburg (1999–2000)).  In his public art, Plensa challenged himself to involve the viewer with his art, which led to his conception of the Crown Fountain.  His objective  was to create a socially relevant, interactive  fountain for the 21st century.  Since water is the focus of a fountain, and since Chicago, and especially Millennium Park, is so greatly affected by the nearby waterfront, Plensa sought to create an eternal water work to complement the local natural inspirations. Because of the colder winters common to the climate of Chicago, Plensa created a fountain that would remain vibrant when the water was inactive in the wintertime, so the fountain is an experience of light themes and the use of video technology.
  Plensa explores dualism with Crown Fountain, where he has two randomly selected faces "conversing" with each other. Plensa feels that by using faces, he can represent the diversity of the city both in ethnicity and in age. The artist intends to portray the sociocultural evolution of the city by updating the collection of images.  His representation has become a part of the city's  pop culture; the first few episodes of the first season of Prison Break featured shots of the fountain.
  Plensa feels that the challenge in the creation of successful work of public art is to integrate the viewer into an interactive relationship with the art.  The fountain is known for encouraging its visitors to splash and slide in the reflecting pool, jostle for position under the water spout and place themselves under the cascade.  This interactivity was to some degree accidental.  Although the city planned for some interactivity, the transformation of the fountain into a water park for kids within hours of opening surprised Plensa.  Now, when the National Weather Service issues summer heat advisories and the Governor of Illinois declares state office buildings as official daytime cooling centers, the national press points to Crown Fountain as a respite for inhabitants of the Chicago metropolitan area.
caption: Opposing 50-foot (15 m) towers represent Plensa's dualism theme.
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