wonderWALL AT LISBON / LIKEARCHITECTS

wonderWALL is an exhibition space designed to receive the masterpiece The Pool by Jen Lewin in Colombo Shopping Mall, in Lisbon, built with approximately 20,000 strips of white and black fabric.

 

The temporary museum presents an abstract skin, a textile facade built in black fabric, completely apprehensible by visitors and continuing throughout its surface, oscillating with airflows. The cylindrical space seeks to emphasize the centrality of the exposed artwork, which has assumed a critical importance in the design space, enhanced by the eradication of a main entrance in favour of a fully permeable facade that dissolves the entrance along the entire periphery of the installation space.

 

wonderWALL was sought to create an immersive space, which raises awareness of the act of entrance through the will in finding a space that is not completely visible from the outside. At the same time, the absence of physical barriers to free movement demand from visitors in the appropriation of space, preparing them for interaction with the work of Jen Lewin.

It is a structure suspended from the skylight on the central square, with about 14 meters in diameter and 4 meters tall, which defines space – exterior and interior – by the (des) multiplication of numerous strips of fabric. Never touching the floor of the mall itself – which exposes the artist`s work – it allows to see, from the outside, a continuous line of coloured light coming from the inside, and, from the inside, to see an unbroken line of light from outside.

 

For brightness control issues, the work of Jen Lewin is not visible from the outside neither from the upper galleries of the mall. Instead, the coverage of the exhibition structures presents itself as a large circular weaving screen that highlights the manual process that characterizes the construction of this dome space, bringing out a unique textile texture.

Protected from the bright light from the shopping, the interior of the exhibition space is a totally white dome created to make stand out The Pool, by reflecting, in its immense surface, the chromatic variations that characterize the interactive light artwork. At the same time, the material continuity and the absence of spatial references helped to make visitors getting lost, even if just for a moment, in that colourful wonder space.