The building was inaugurated on November 17, 18 and 19, hosting the exhibition "Power Architecture". The exhibition will occupy the approximately 800 square meters of the Exposition Nave with a proposal to reflect on "eight powers that align, inflect and diverge from each other," and it was commissioned by the architects Jorge Carvalho, Pedro Bandeira and Ricardo Carvalho.
For the commissioners, "power in architecture is a key issue for questioning how contemporary society and architecture work together." And they continue: "Architecture is not just the expression of a single power. Reflects and works from multiple powers. We have therefore decided to isolate those who seem to clarify this complex cartography.
In this way emerges the collective power, the regulator, technological, economic, domestic, cultural, media and ritual. In the long struggle of the relationship between man and nature, culture and technology, these powers played a variable force in the production of architectural artifacts and in the design of the city and territory.
Today, in the face of a political importance that excuses and validates decisions that damage the public thing and the meaning of the communities, there seems to be room for a new reflection on power," one reads in the opening text of the book that accompanies the Exhibition, a co-edition of the House of Architecture and the Swiss publisher Lars Müller.
The Exposition Nave of the House of Architecture, "Poder Arquitectura" brings together photographs, models, books, drawings, videos, magazines, postcards and other materials around a hundred projects of architecture built around the world. These themes are represented by a selection of national and international projects: Aires Mateus, Álvaro Siza, Vylder Vinck Taillieu, Assemble, BIG, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Herzog & de Meuron, Inês Lobo, Carrilho da Graça, Johnston Marklee + Nuno Brandão Costa + Office, KGDVS, Lacaton & Vassal, Marina Tabassum, OMA, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Peter Soderman, Vijitha Basnayaka, Spora Architects, among others.
Description of project by aNC arquitectos
Power/Architecture – Exhibition design
In an exhibition, the only architecture that visitors experience is the space that shelters it, the rest is representations of it. The design for the exhibition Power/Architecture explores all the spatial resources of the existing warehouse. The only and central void has a potential for non-sequential visits and for activities with the public. The surrounding device is an uninterrupted gallery-archive with photographs, mock-ups, objects, clippings, videos, drawings and texts assembled in three successive planes. A tribune under the turret turns visitors into privileged observers and potential speakers.
