Alchemy is a temporary, immersive installation at the Bank of England Museum created by Melek Zeynep Studio for the London Festival of Architecture. Rooted in the ancient ideas of alchemy, the work explores belonging as a process of transformation, connection, and shared presence rather than a fixed state.
About the Installation
When: 15 June to 3 July 2026
Alchemy is often associated with the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary substance believed to transform matter and reveal hidden knowledge. In this project, the Philosopher’s Stone is reimagined not as an object, but as an experience. The installation responds to the movements, voices, and bodies of visitors, turning individual presence into something collective. As people move through the space, reflections shift, sounds change, and the environment is subtly altered. Belonging emerges through participation, through being seen, heard, and reflected back by the space and by others within it.
Installed beneath the museum’s dome, The Living Room forms a circular structure that can be experienced both from the outside and within. This circular form draws on long standing ideas of the centre and the periphery, the individual and the wider world. Visitors are invited to step into the heart of the installation, where their own image and sound are transformed and multiplied. The work makes visible the idea that we are shaped by our surroundings, just as we shape them in return.
For the London Festival of Architecture theme of belonging, The Living Room offers a quiet but powerful proposition. Belonging is not about ownership or exclusion, but about relationship. It is created through attention, movement, and mutual presence. By using the language of alchemy, a practice historically concerned with connection between the material and the human, the micro and the macro, this project invites visitors to reflect on how they inhabit space, and how space in turn holds them.
The installation is accompanied by a programme of talks and a walking tour titled London: City of Alchemy, expanding these ideas into the wider city and its layered histories. Together, they invite audiences to consider belonging as something we continually make, through movement, encounter, and shared experience.
Essential information
- Please note there is airport-style security at the Museum's entrance.
- This installation, and our entire Museum, is free to visit with no advance booking required (unless you are in a group of 15 or more).
- Last entry to the Museum is 4.30pm
