LX Factory

Neighborhood · AlcântaraLisbon,Portugal

A block of Lisbon factory halls under the bridge deck, reopened in 2008 as studios and shops with the machinery and rails deliberately left.

LX Factory is a block of brick warehouses and machine halls in Alcântara that was deliberately left unrestored. It reopened in 2008 as a rented complex of studios, shops, galleries and restaurants on one condition: nothing was cleaned up. Cast iron, freight rails set in the floor, exposed pipework, peeling paint and the machinery itself were all left where they were, and the walls were given to muralists. It is what a factory looks like when nobody has smoothed it over. The thing that makes it a place rather than a development is directly overhead. The 25 de Abril bridge crosses the site, and its deck carries road and rail high above, so a constant low harmonic runs through the whole complex — you hear it before you register what it is. Inside, Ler Devagar occupies an old printing hall with books shelved to the roof and a press still standing among them. The site made textiles in the nineteenth century, printed newspapers in the twentieth, and then stood empty for decades.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The rails in the floor are real — freight track is still set into the ground between the buildings, and the machinery left in the halls was working plant, not decoration.
The murals change — the walls are repainted regularly by invited artists, so the specific pieces you have seen photographed are unlikely to still be there.
Sunday is the market — stalls fill the lane between the buildings from late morning, which makes it the busiest day and the best one if you want the place full rather than quiet.

Things to do

1
Stand still and listen for the bridge
Get into the middle of the main lane and stop for thirty seconds. Under the conversation there is a continuous low note that rises and falls — road and rail crossing the deck above you. Once you have heard it you cannot stop hearing it anywhere on the site.
2
Go up into the old press hall
Take the stairs to the mezzanine in the old printing hall rather than staying on the floor. From up there the shelves run away from you on all four walls and the press sits in the middle of the room where it was left. You can see how much of the building is still the works it was.