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At the very end of Como's breakwater, where the pier runs into the first basin of the lake, two steel sine curves rise and cross in the air. Life Electric, Daniel Libeskind's 2015 homage to Alessandro Volta, turns the inventor's greatest discovery, electric tension between two poles, into a public sculpture at the city's lakefront edge.
Why it matters
The monument closes a Volta triangle across the lake. The Tempio Voltiano on the shore houses the physicist's instruments, the Faro Voltiano lighthouse burns on the hill above Brunate, and Libeskind described his sculpture as the ideal third pole joining light, wind and water between them. Its form spells the initials of Volta himself: two opposing sinusoids, the same waveform that describes alternating current, rising from the water at the gateway of the city that claims him.
What to notice
The two curves form a line-like steel structure clad in stainless panels. Libeskind framed the work as the tension between the poles of a battery, associated with Volta's work, and natural elements. Located at the end of Como's breakwater in the lake's first basin, the sculpture stands between the city lakefront and the Brunate hillside.
Context and history
The project was commissioned and funded by the citizens' association Amici di Como, which raised the construction budget by donation; Libeskind donated the design to the city. Components were barged across the lake and assembled by crane, and the work was inaugurated on 2 October 2015 after delays that pushed it past the original May date linked to Expo 2015. The arrival was not universally welcomed: a civic list collected thousands of signatures for a consultative referendum against the installation, but the petition lapsed as the work was already under way, and the sculpture became part of Como's contemporary public art. The municipal heritage portal now lists it among the monuments of 20th-century and contemporary Como, describing its position between the Volta museum on the shore and the lighthouse on the mountain.