The Portuguese pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – Venice Biennale has already been visited by more than 2,500 people, since its opening on Saturday, announced today the Directorate-General for Arts (DGArtes).
Among the “more than 2,500 people” who have already visited the official Portuguese representation are “professionals in the area, students and researchers, gallery owners, journalists, families and the general public, coming from all over the world”, says DGArtes in a statement released today.
The Portugal Pavilion, which in this edition is once again installed in the Pallazzo Franchetti, located on the bank of the Grand Canal in Venice, hosts the “Fertile Futures” project, curated by Andreia Garcia and jointly curated by Ana Neiva and Diogo Aguiar, who is based on seven cases in Portuguese territory.
DGArtes describes that visitors are welcomed “with a 14-meter water tub, from which the seven rooms where each project team, invited by the curators, worked on a space centered on seven different hydrogeographies”.
“The young architects from each of these teams, in collaboration with specialists from other disciplines, focused on water resources in Portugal that are strongly impacted by human intervention and its effects and present, in their installations, questions that allow them to think about the future”, reads in the communiqué issued today.
For each of the teams of the seven hydrogeographies addressed in the project, an architecture studio and a specialist from another disciplinary area were invited: the Tâmega Basin, (team Space Transcribers and geographer Álvaro Domingues), the Douro Internacional (architect Dulcineia Santos and civil engineer João Pedro Matos Fernandes), the Médio Tejo (architect Guida Marques and Environmental engineer Érica Castanheira), Albufeira do Alqueva (atelier Pedrez Studio and landscape architect Aurora Carapinha), Rio Mira (Corpo Atelier and anthropologist Eglantina Monteiro), the lagoon of Sete Cidades, on the island of São Miguel, Azores (Ilhéu Atelier of architecture and the geographer João Mora Porteiro), and the Ribeiras of Madeira (Ponto Atelier and Ana Salgueiro Rodrigues).
“The scarcity of fresh water is a global problem with dramatic manifestations in Portuguese territory. It has repercussions on the extension of periods of extreme drought and increased heat, worsening soil aridity, risk of fire, and, at the same time, floods that we have experienced recently”, warned architect Andreia Garcia about the motivation of the project, in an interview with Lusa in January.
Andreia Garcia considers that “public discussion on the protection, management and future of this natural resource is urgent”, especially due to the problems experienced in various regions of the national territory, from which the project selected seven real cases.
In this approach is found the “contribution of architecture in the design or redesign of a more decarbonized, decolonized and collaborative idea of the future” with other disciplines, with the aim of finding sustainable solutions for the freshwater reservoirs of the future.
The 18th Venice Architecture Biennale has official representations from 63 countries, with Portugal and Brazil being the only Portuguese-speakers present, but among the 89 architects and architecture firms, mostly from Africa and the African diaspora, are Banga Colectivo, architecture office in Luanda and Lisbon, and the Brazilian studio Cartografia Negra.
The Vatican pavilion is curated by Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça and features the installation “O Encontro”, by architect Álvaro Siza.
Under the title “The Laboratory of the Future”, the 18th Venice Biennale was programmed by curator Lesley Lokko and will run from Saturday to November 26, from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 am to 6 pm.
