Welcome to Part 2 of this series on my photos of MAAT in Lisbon
This is the MAAT Gallery in Lisbon. It sit on the Tagus river, as does much of Lisboa. It is the new part of the wider MAAT concept/museum thingy, It hits all of the Museum/Gallery tropes. The one part of an old power station, now disused because you don't keep power stations open which are so close to major cities, a little like Battlesea in London you turn them into art galleries.
But you also need new spaces, and when you build big cultural building nowadays you make them big and white and very cool - This has white tiles that very much remind me of the Sydney Opera House, and it has lines and curves that remind me of, well so many modern buildings, and a ability to walk up onto the roof, to look across the water a little like the Oslo opera house.
So here we go - four views of MAAT Gallery in Lisboa to the locals or Lisbon to us foreigners (and tomorrow four more)
Sort of like a space ship (which reminds me a little of the court building in Singapore which certainly has more overt spaceship vibes.)
I could have shot this thing all day - we were lucky with the September weather the beautiful blue skies and strong sunlight made the white tiles sparkles, also helped by the light reflection of the Tagus river.
I like this because of the close up of the tiles, there is something I like in the unevenness of it as well, like it has been hand laid, which I assume it might have been, the curve doesn't seem perfectly mathematically engineered it feels more organic than that.
And this a final view, not quite of the building, but rather what you see if you duck into the entrance. A little vista of river, and I like the business man mid stride to part it all up.
