Estação Elevatória nº 4 · Lisboa
A house made of moving light.
Six rooms in a 1912 pumping station on the Tagus, each tuned to a light the sky only makes for minutes. Walk them at your own pace: about forty minutes, end to end.
- rooms
- 6rooms
- of corridor
- 43 mof corridor
- walk
- ≈ 40 minwalk
- 10:00–20:00
- Tue–Sun10:00–20:00
Room IBlue Hour
The twenty minutes after the sun.
The sky drains to cobalt and the city comes up to meet it. Outside, it lasts as long as the sun takes to sink six degrees. Here, it lasts as long as you stand still.
Room IIAurora
Curtains that answer the solar wind.
Oxygen a hundred kilometres up glows green; higher, where the air is thinner, it burns red. The curtains in Room II replay the magnetometer trace of a real storm over Tromsø, minute by minute.
Room IIINoctiluca
The sea, lit from inside.
Noctiluca scintillans is a single cell that flashes blue when the water around it moves. It's the one room that reacts to you: move, and the walls answer.
Room IVAlpenglow
The mountain keeps the sun after you lose it.
When the valley has gone grey, the peaks still catch light that has crossed four hundred kilometres of air, scattered rose by the time it lands. Room IV is the only warm room in the house.
Room VThe Score Room
Compose the next room.
Every room in the house runs from a score: a hue, a drift, a bloom. Here the score is yours. Turn the dials and the walls around you follow.
420 nm · drift 0.35 · bloom 55%
Room VIVisit
Come in from the street.
One group every twenty minutes, so no room ever holds more than a few people.
- Tue–Thu, Sat–Sun
- 10:00–20:00 · last entry 19:20
- Friday
- 10:00–23:00 · last entry 22:20
- Monday
- Closed
Rua da Cozinha Económica 21, Alcântara. Step-free throughout; every room has a bench, and no room is ever fully dark.
The light keeps moving after you leave.
Each room is re-tuned at the solstices, so the house you walked today won't be the one you walk in June.