Project Description
Their parents have waved goodbye. Then their world becomes increasingly blurred. The LEDs twinkling on the shiny stainless steel capsule, the lights of the city and the stars all blend together in front of the Atomium’s portholes. Meanwhile, inside the Kids‘ Sphere, Leon, Maria, Liza and Paul whoop with delight! They and their classmates will spend this night with their teacher, on a mission to find the answer to the question: What would they like the future to look like? Like this of course!
The whole atomium has been asking this question since the building was created in 1958 for the first
International Exibition after the Second World War, when the cries for optimism were very loud. The engineer André Waterkeyn created an icon based on the structural form of an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times. The elementary particle grew to a height of over 100 metres! The interiors by the architectural brothers André and Jean Polak are equally futuristic, even more so since Alicia Framis’s bedrooms and Ingo Maurer’s lighting design were added as part of the refurbishments in 2006. The Atomium still attracts around 600,000 visitors a year. The panoramic area and exhibition are open to the public daily. It is only the overnight accommodation that is reserved for primary school groups, which does of course make sense, as it is they who represent the future. Who else, if not they, should be given the opportunity to sleep over their spontaneous answer to the all-important question?!
>>> Facts: The panoramic area and exhibitions are open to the public daily; the overnight accommodation is reserved for primary school groups.
