A memorial that lifts a city’s gaze.
On Bourbon Street, light was never going to be enough on its own. The brief for Second Line in the Sky was specific and unflinching: build a public memorial that holds the fourteen lives lost on January 1, 2025, while still letting the French Quarter breathe.
Designed by Studio West with the New Orleans community, the installation suspends nearly 1,000 hand-painted prayer flags across the 100, 200 and 300 blocks. The flags on the 100 block carry messages and photographs contributed by the victims’ loved ones — words and images of those who knew them, raised above the street.
Above the flags, illuminated umbrellas, mineral-fibre trumpets in white and gold, and a steady canopy of MaxiGlobe spheres turn three blocks of street into a slow-moving second line — overhead instead of underfoot. Grief and celebration in the same breath. The way New Orleans does it.
The architectural backbone of the canopy is a fully integrated turnkey system: MaxiLED on the lighting side and Lumentender Control Solutions on the Cloud control side, delivered through their proprietary LT-1BOX power and controls enclosures. The MaxiGlobe RGBW string system had to disappear into the aesthetic of the installation while carrying every demanding technical requirement — color fidelity, wireless block-to-block synchronization, IP68 weather resistance for an open-sky Louisiana winter, and the flexibility to chase, twinkle and breathe in time with the sculptural elements above it.
