Some thoughts on the Cosmovitral

2026-07-01

The Cosmovitral is a botanical garden inside a stained glass box. The glass came later than the building — a market hall first, then an argument about what to do with it, then seventy-one panels of colour wrapped around the plants.

Stained glass panels of the Cosmovitral, backlit at midday — Bundled with the route. Transformed at build time by imagetools, served from the same origin as the page.

At midday the light does the work. The panels stop being architecture and start being weather — the floor goes green under the ferns, amber near the east wall, and the whole room shifts by the hour.

The Cosmovitral seen from the street, its glass dark against the sky — Stored in R2. Transformed on demand at the edge, cropped and compressed per recipe.

Both figures above are the same photograph. One was resolved from a local import, the other from the stills catalog — and the markup that renders them never learns which is which.