A wall that studies one letter
The print archive's north wall ran sixty metres without a window — the largest blank page in the neighbourhood. It now carries a single letterform study, tiled: the letter R, drawn 340 ways across five thousand azulejos, from strict compass-and-rule constructions to the loosest brush cursive, ordered so the wall drifts from geometry to gesture as the street slopes downhill.
Lisbon's facades have spoken in tile for three centuries; the piece only changes the subject. Each azulejo was silkscreened in cobalt on cream at a workshop across the river, using the archive's own specimen books as source — three of the 340 forms are traced from pages printed before the wall's own building existed.
Reading distance
From across the avenue the wall is texture, a woven blue-grey. At the bus stop it resolves into alphabet. With your nose at the grout you find the tilemakers' registration marks, left visible by agreement — the piece is about how letters are made, and so is honest about how tiles are. Schoolchildren are sent to find the one R that is printed upside down. There are two.