Fundãcao do Largo is a permanent interactive art installation commissioned by The Largo, comprising of interpolating light-paintings on an exposed rock formation.

The paintings are alive throughout the year. They slowly transform as the days and seasons pass, bringing the colours of Porto from each season into the building.

The installation is located deep in the heritage building of The Largo — a large room in the core of the property where guests rest and reflect on their experiences in Porto. We chose the exposed rock formation in this space, part of the foundation of the building, as the spatial element in this project, where we connect the metaphorical heart of the The Largo to the world outside through light and colour.

The project was created through an iterative process with close collaboration between visual creators, interaction designers, and technologists, prototyping on location.

To accurately present the changing seasonal colours of Porto, we collaborate with a local photographer to curate pieces from their work that capture the representative colours of their city in each season. We then transform these photographs into abstract digital paintings that distill the colours and shapes within them, ready to be reflected off the rock wall’s physical surface.

These digital paintings slowly morph into each other as time moves along. The colours and shapes of summer slowly interpolating into those of autumn in real time, as each day and month passes, continuously projected onto the rock formation year-round. Viewers are gently immersed in the colours of the city outside whenever they are visiting the heart of The Largo.