The huge impact created by the Chiado 1988 fire was followed by a large urban renovation project whose main goal was to re-qualify this quarter. However, the following decade one felt that something was yet to happen; many of the commercial spaces at rua Garret were still empty. In an essentially commercial area these empties were established as absences due to their non-interaction with the public space.
This project sought to “re-establish” the participative function of these private areas with the public space and the citizen. “The streets are the address of the collective. The collective is the essence eternally agitated, eternally in movement that among building facades supports, experiments, learns and feels as much as the protected individual among four walls” – Walter Benjamin.
Following this principle, projectors with a strong light intensity were installed inside the unoccupied shops thus the interior space was completely lit up with a red light that was visible through the “windowshop”.