The Yth Dimension – Lisbon Falls | Marcelo Dantas

The Yth Dimension

The Fonté Luminosa, a celebration to commemorate for the continuous supply of water to the eastern part of Lisbon, a pet project envisioned by two brothers Carlos Rebello de Andrade and William Rebello de Andrade which was inaugurated on the 30^th of May, 1948. Marcello Dantas a Contemporary architect from Portugal, defined a transition to this once viewing spectacle, into the much more “Touch and Realize” interactive space by defining a Y type wooden platform reaching out to the fountain from the public plaza atop the Alameda Dom Afonso Henriques park. “The structure is presented as an idea of trespassing or transition to another reality. For the rediscovery of a known place, now experienced in a more complete way, covering all the senses of our body, in an experience that is meant to be total.”– Marcelo Dantas

The idea of this temporary installation is to transcend from realism into a completely different dimension, where the visitors are given the benefit of the experience, to re-live them by making memories. This quintessential installation, a wooden batting clad in oriented strand board, skirts around Diogo de Macedo’s Tagus, gradually rising from the plaza to the fountain cascaded by high walls gradually shedding height as one goes up to the unknown, opening into scenic panorama. This splits into two branches, one moving further into the fountain and the other branching onto the other side of the Tagus as a platform overlooking the plaza. The visitors can either chose to get soaked by the fountain’s mist or can wear the cape that’s provided at the opening of the installation.

This wooden extrusion is a simple installation, as opposed to the intricacy of work plied on the statues of the nymph’s augmenting the fountain’s facade. The iteration gets the user, closer to the experience of interacting with the sculptures, water, light and sound of the surrounding environment, accentuating one’s feeling of suspense, contemplation, discovery and awe into a perfectly synchronized harmony of multi modal experiences, just if one transforms into a child at the thought of getting wet. This temporary iteration is an added bonus for the park, as it gets the user one step closer to a completely out of the world experience.

 

By: Achyuthan Ramaswamy