Ananya got last month's answer; nice job!
Look, it's a stack of those acrylic shelves you tricked out your den with in the '70s. Have you stumbled upon a yard sale? Maybe you can pick up a lava lamp and a beanbag chair on your prowl for vintage wares. Not likely. The luminous sheets you're looking at weigh in at a grand total of eight tons and represent $400,000 worth of laminated glass set atop a granite base, one of four such foundations in the public space you're visiting. This base was intended to support an equestrian statue of a monarch, but—wait for it—the funding dried up.
For the past decade, contemporary artists have been mounting their works here on a rotating basis. This light-refracting piece was designed by a German as a maquette for a high-rise. Earlier occupants included a marble-resin Christ as well as another anointed one: a football star who made a brief, unauthorized appearance as a wax figure.
Since it was first laid out at a crossroads in the mid-nineteenth century, the space you are in has seen its share of riots and attracts every nut job in the city who wants to grind his ax. It also hosts sports victory celebrations and peace rallies. Of late, it's become a full-service pedestrian zone with loos, lifts, and a café thanks in no small part to the release of hawks that helped cause swarms of feral birds to hightail it out of here. A prominent column has been restored, and two fountains get their turn this month. The plaza is now so user-friendly that should you wish to make a movie in it—stage a huge Bollywood dance number, say—, the application process can be done online. If this urban hive of activity ever overwhelms you, remember that you can always seek refuge in the corner church, where a renowned chamber orchestra just might be playing
This radiant display will vanish very soon. Next up is a work by a sculptor whose angel with airplane wings you discovered a few years ago; after that, a ship in a bottle with sails stitched from ethnic textiles. Which means that these days, the only riots you are likely to see here will be purely aesthetic.
Where are you, anyhow?
http://www.concierge.com/cntra...hereareyou/march2009
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing 