Darkhouse Lighthouse
Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis
A full-size, working lighthouse constructed entirely within a dilapidated row house. Darkhouse Lighthouse is a permanent public artwork, at 1913 Tours Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The lighthouse, usually an isolated beacon of hope and warning, is hidden instead inside a domestic space. It emerges from the basement floor, and stretches four stories up, terminating in a weathervane that pierces the roofline. At night the rotating light is visible from the street below. A viewer passes through the work without retracing their steps, creating a seamless and disorientating journey into a house, through a lighthouse, out into and around a garden, then back to the street.
This architectural instrument will sit much like a latent time capsule in anticipation of being fully activated one day as a functional navigational marker once the sea level rises to meet the work – currently 879 feet above and 382 miles away from the ocean.
Collaboration with Phillip Andrew Lewis / Commissioned by Troy Hill Art Houses / Construction by Dovetail
