The Poetics of Reason. 5th Lisbon Architecture Triennale, 2019

More than ever before, it stands as a condition to define an architecture for our contemporary ordinary condition. As a result of a massification of construction, such a condition implies that everybody is entitled to understand architecture without a special background in the field.

The event will spread through five main exhibitions, ten Associated Projects and the Talk, Talk, Talk series.

The five main exhibitions are taking place at the Triennale’s headquarters, the Sinel de Cordes Palace, as well as CCB – Garagem Sul, MAAT – Central Tejo, and in two new venues: MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art and Culturgest. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation will host the Talk, Talk, Talk symposium (28–30 Nov). The 2019 edition will also include the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Début Award and the Universities Competition Award.

Economy of means is an aesthetic category as well as a design tool. It makes it possible to imagine and evaluate results. It is at the core of any relevant design, whatever the medium. In its usual meaning, it signifies using as few means as possible to reach a specific goal. Beyond this, one can link it to any attitude based on a critical approach to the means used to create something. Economy of means has as much to do with the process as it does with the results. It is an investigation of form in all its dimensions. Form is the horizon of any human activity pushed to a high level of accomplishment. Economy of means is the DNA of good forms. Architecture is defining the good form for a building. Using few and carefully surveyed means enables architects to give meaning and intelligibility to their buildings.

This exhibition, part of the Lisbon Triennale under the theme The Poetics of Reason, seeks to contribute to the definition of the specificity of architectural rationality, as do the four other that make up the event. Each of its first four sections shows a specific regime of economy of means. Economy of repetition leads to typology and interest in ordinary architecture and the city. Economy of void leads to the invention of space. Economy of measurements leads to surreal poetics and mass housing. Economy of material leads to the fantasised possibility of building the whole Earth. Economy of procedures expands the limits of architecture. Economy of means is the condition of possibility for architecture to be able to speak its own language under any superimposed vocabulary. Measure, rhythm, repetition, type, exception, system, order, geometry, analogy are some of its main words; economy of means is the grammar; poetics of reason is the result.

C1.back Pier - Vittorio Aureli Stop City 2007
 

AGRICULTURE AND ARCHITECTURE: TAKING THE COUNTRY'S SIDE

Taking stock of the severe environmental predicament that now faces our world, this exhibition intends to ignite a reflection (both retrospective and prospective) on the strong link between the twin disciplines of agriculture and architecture, and on their growing divorce since the industrial revolution. It aims to learn from agricultural scientists, activists and designers who have consistently explored the hypothesis of a future of energy descent and its consequences, for the redesign and maintenance of living territories.

Agroecology and permaculture have evolved useful concepts and strategies for imagining a post-industrial technology based on a radical economy of energy and material resources. What if we consider permaculture not only as a kind of architecture? What about redefining architecture’s rationality and economy of means today? The exhibition is structured in three main areas: a central space with seven sections, a large-scale illustration and a screening area for documentary films. Taking the Country’s Side is a reflexive and didactic attempt to reconnect architecture and agriculture, and to emphasize lessons that contemporary architects and urbanists might draw from this school of thought and action.

INNER SPACE

Inner Space is part of an ongoing research project into the construction of architectural imagination. It sets out to investigate the space between inner and outer realities, looking to identify the moments in which the two realms interact most vividly. Inner Space regards imagination, and more precisely, architectural imagination, as the critical process that makes the interplay between the two realms possible, creating the potential for a space to be inhabited and explored in itself.

We define imagination as the capacity to organise, structure and translate into other forms our own experience of the world. Such an experience may be direct, or it can be mediated by the encounter of a subject with imagery. Imagination is thus a mental faculty strictly connected to rationality, and the dialectical relationship between the two fields has been defined and theorised on by numerous philosophers and scientists over the centuries.

Through Inner Space, we aim to bind the construction of the imagination with a parallel notion: the identification of imagination as an immersive territory that can be experienced, crossed and even inhabited.

Besides, it also identifies two parallel and strictly intertwined movements intervening in the construction of architectural imagination: a collective one and an individual one, two spheres complementing each other. The aim is to identify imagination as an immersive territory that can be experienced, crossed and even inhabited, defined as a human ability which partly relies on a collective process. This collective moment in the construction of the imagination intertwines with an individual one, developed by each author. Inner Space also identifies how architectural imagination is capable of nourishing other disciplines: from art to videogames, virtual reality, comic books and forensic investigation.

 

WHAT IS ORNAMENT?

What is Ornament? is a big question, which aims to reconfigure the discussion about ornament, particularly focusing on its current appropriation and interpretation. By trying to find possible answers, the exhibition shows the complexity of a multifaceted narrative, which looks into the very essence of ornament. As a matter of fact, it reacts to what seems to be an ongoing fresh, self-confident and joyful return of ornament, intended in its pre-digital sense, beyond its superficial iteration of the early 2000s. Today it seems to be natural to investigate the contemporary form and proportion of a column; to carefully consider the junctions among elements; to question the nature of cladding, as a project rather than as a consequence; to design expressive facades with images and typography; and to dress surfaces with patterns, motifs, textures, materials and colours.

As architects, we can decide to concentrate our efforts on the ornamental apparatus in order to maximize results. Whether this process is conscious or unconscious, or simply a reaction to a lack of means, it seems necessary to redefine the current threshold between ornament and decoration; to rethink what we can allow ourselves in our daily practice. How can ornament be reconsidered today as an integral part of architecture? What is its exact position? Where can it exist? What is its impact and its value? Can we still talk about ornament as a quantitative or qualitative option? Can we still imagine the precise positioning of ornament? Composed by a set of six collections, What is Ornament? opens different angles of inquiry, instead of calling for definitive answers, whose aggregating principles transcend history and blur the boundaries among disciplines.

 

NATURAL BEAUTY

Natural Beauty gathers student projects from the Lisbon Triennale Millennium bcp Universities Award competition and works of architects, from the 13th century to this day. Architecture can be understood as an art transforming the act of sheltering human beings and activities. Construction is essential, directly engaged with the spatiality and expressivity of the architectural object.

Karl Blossfeldt’s photographic work from the 20s is presented in the form of a chandelier that illustrates these concepts, to understand the underlying rules in the construction of form, at the roots of their harmony and coherence.

This approach supports the acceptance of the architectural discipline, as a series of theories developed through time and that can be renewed, reinterpreted and redefined regarding contemporary means and needs.

In dialogue with the proposals of the Lisbon Triennale Millennium bcp Universities Award, Natural Beauty questions how can construction be considered from a cultural point of view? From the definition of urban form to the constitution of the architectural one, an international competition invited students to present proposals for Marvila, a potential site of urban development against urban sprawl, located in the limits of Lisbon.