The MAAT opened on the Tagus waterfront in Belém in 2016 in a building by the British architects AL_A — a curved aluminium shell that sits low against the river, its surface covered in three-dimensional ceramic tiles that change appearance across the day as the light moves. The building is a deliberate argument that a new cultural institution in Lisbon should not try to compete with the Jerónimos Monastery visible to the west, but should instead do something that the 16th century could not: make a building that responds specifically to the quality of Tagus light and the surface of water. The interior is the other argument: the main gallery is a brutalist concrete volume — columns, ceiling grids, raw surfaces — inside which exhibitions are mounted without the gallery's architecture receding. The permanent collection focuses on Portuguese modernism and contemporary digital and media art. The rooftop is open and the view from it over the Tagus toward the 25 de Abril bridge is the kind of view that the building has been correctly positioned to provide.
Belém, Lisbon, Portugal