As the site of London’s only lighthouse, its smallest museum and the world’s longest-running song, Trinity Buoy Wharf is an enclave of quirky superlatives, housing large-scale sculptures, immersive art installations and gallery exhibitions.
Standing since 1866, the lighthouse was once used a training venue for prospective lighthouse keepers and a testing grounds for new technologies – scientist Michael Faraday even conducted experiments there. His legacy persists at the wharf in a mini-museum called The Faraday Effect, a shed-sized museum housing a replica of his workshop.
Today, the lighthouse is home to Longplayer, a sound art display composed of 234 Tibetan singing bowls, designed to play until the year 2999. But the music doesn’t stop there. Lightship 95, the apple red boat moored alongside the wharf, catches waves of a different kind – it’s a recording studio that’s hosted the likes of Ed Sheeran, Lana Del Ray, George Ezra and Minus the Bear.
The wharf’s historic Docklands structures are juxtaposed with the modern, sustainable innovation of ‘cargotecture’. Five shipping container buildings house artists’ studios and offices; there’s even the Orchard Cafe, adorned with a sculpture of a black cab sprouting a tree.
