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| Lisbon Architecture Triennale: strictly no buildings allowed | Lisbon Architecture Triennale: strictly no buildings allowed |
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| Financial crisis has an interesting effect on the perception of architecture. When the economy falters, buildings are among the first things to be put on hold, and architects among the first put out of work. The conclusion drawn by some is that buildings are simply not enough: to avoid extinction, architecture must claim renewed relevance by being more than a service for the production of walls, roofs and floors. | Financial crisis has an interesting effect on the perception of architecture. When the economy falters, buildings are among the first things to be put on hold, and architects among the first put out of work. The conclusion drawn by some is that buildings are simply not enough: to avoid extinction, architecture must claim renewed relevance by being more than a service for the production of walls, roofs and floors. |
| What often follows this reasoning is a kind of discipline envy, a desire for architects to be artists and philosophers, anthropologists and politicians, performers and cartographers – anything but people engaged in the tedious irrelevance of bricks and mortar. | What often follows this reasoning is a kind of discipline envy, a desire for architects to be artists and philosophers, anthropologists and politicians, performers and cartographers – anything but people engaged in the tedious irrelevance of bricks and mortar. |
| In Portugal, where graduate unemployment currently stands at 40% and half-finished construction projects dot the landscape, it is easy to see why those trained to design buildings might question if they are better off doing something else. | In Portugal, where graduate unemployment currently stands at 40% and half-finished construction projects dot the landscape, it is easy to see why those trained to design buildings might question if they are better off doing something else. |
| “This is the generation of young architects who may ask if they should be designing the architecture of networks and systems, of societies or conversations, rather than buildings,” says Beatrice Galilee, the London-based curator of the third Lisbon Architecture Triennale, which opened this week with the aim of positioning architecture as an “expanding field of critical spatial practice.” | “This is the generation of young architects who may ask if they should be designing the architecture of networks and systems, of societies or conversations, rather than buildings,” says Beatrice Galilee, the London-based curator of the third Lisbon Architecture Triennale, which opened this week with the aim of positioning architecture as an “expanding field of critical spatial practice.” |
| Titled Close, Closer, the three month-long event takes the form of three primary exhibitions, housed in some of the Portuguese capital's most evocative palaces and industrial sheds, along with a bulging programme of over a hundred associated events scattered around the city. With these activities – all free to the public – the Triennale seeks to present architecture as “a force of occupation and transition, a speculator and a fantasist,” as something “exciting and intangible, mercurial and indistinct.” | Titled Close, Closer, the three month-long event takes the form of three primary exhibitions, housed in some of the Portuguese capital's most evocative palaces and industrial sheds, along with a bulging programme of over a hundred associated events scattered around the city. With these activities – all free to the public – the Triennale seeks to present architecture as “a force of occupation and transition, a speculator and a fantasist,” as something “exciting and intangible, mercurial and indistinct.” |
| Walking through the dreamy installations, the overriding impression is of nebulous fantasy. In The Real and Other Fictions, curated by Mariana Pestana, a 17th-century palace is filled with a number of “fictionalised re-enactments” of the building's former lives. Over the years, the crumbling pile has been home to the Embassy of Spain and the Legation of Germany, served as the headquarters of a radical anarcho-syndicalists' group, as well as been the base for the Portuguese Association of Landscape Architects. Each of these momentous episodes now provides a tenuous trigger for an installation by an invited artist or architect. | Walking through the dreamy installations, the overriding impression is of nebulous fantasy. In The Real and Other Fictions, curated by Mariana Pestana, a 17th-century palace is filled with a number of “fictionalised re-enactments” of the building's former lives. Over the years, the crumbling pile has been home to the Embassy of Spain and the Legation of Germany, served as the headquarters of a radical anarcho-syndicalists' group, as well as been the base for the Portuguese Association of Landscape Architects. Each of these momentous episodes now provides a tenuous trigger for an installation by an invited artist or architect. |
| In one room, visitors can join a “parliament” of raked scaffolding seating to discuss a Universal Declaration of Urban Rights and add their ideas to a blackboard. Elsewhere you can help produce an architectural publication in a UFO-like “fanzine machine,” or sit through an hour-long play without actors – where you are encouraged to read the script to yourself in front of an empty stage set. | In one room, visitors can join a “parliament” of raked scaffolding seating to discuss a Universal Declaration of Urban Rights and add their ideas to a blackboard. Elsewhere you can help produce an architectural publication in a UFO-like “fanzine machine,” or sit through an hour-long play without actors – where you are encouraged to read the script to yourself in front of an empty stage set. |
| Each work, says Pestana, attempts to “engage the audience in intimate encounters with the space that envelops them.” It is an ambition interpreted to the letter by Alex Schweder's Slowly Ceiling installation: two sofas appear to welcome unsuspecting visitors, before swallowing them whole, as the room inflates around their bodies like a malevolent Polanski film set. | Each work, says Pestana, attempts to “engage the audience in intimate encounters with the space that envelops them.” It is an ambition interpreted to the letter by Alex Schweder's Slowly Ceiling installation: two sofas appear to welcome unsuspecting visitors, before swallowing them whole, as the room inflates around their bodies like a malevolent Polanski film set. |
| There are some fun moments like this, but much of the work is entirely baffling, nor is there ample evidence that these exercises in relational aesthetics have much to do with contemporary architectural practice in Lisbon. “Visitors are welcome to dine, read, play, vote, debate, discuss and even fall asleep,” says Pestana, but it is hard to see quite where the appetite for audience participation will come from when the subject at stake remains so vague. | There are some fun moments like this, but much of the work is entirely baffling, nor is there ample evidence that these exercises in relational aesthetics have much to do with contemporary architectural practice in Lisbon. “Visitors are welcome to dine, read, play, vote, debate, discuss and even fall asleep,” says Pestana, but it is hard to see quite where the appetite for audience participation will come from when the subject at stake remains so vague. |
| The narrative theme continues the other side of town in a magnificent former power station, now the Electricity Museum cultural centre, where designer Liam Young has corralled a “think tank” of scientists, technologists, illustrators and authors to speculate on a fictional future city. | The narrative theme continues the other side of town in a magnificent former power station, now the Electricity Museum cultural centre, where designer Liam Young has corralled a “think tank” of scientists, technologists, illustrators and authors to speculate on a fictional future city. |
| Young's approach – which he teaches in studios at London's Architectural Association and Princeton University – employs the language and aesthetics of science fiction as a means of telling stories about the future in a way he believes more people can relate to. | Young's approach – which he teaches in studios at London's Architectural Association and Princeton University – employs the language and aesthetics of science fiction as a means of telling stories about the future in a way he believes more people can relate to. |
| “Architects and the public are so often disconnected from the technologies that are shaping our world,” he says. “We're trying to take tech out of the lab and fictionalise it in a format that people are familiar with, to make it more accessible than the typical architecture exhibition.” It is a logic that relies on the public having a general understanding and interest in sci-fi – a topic that, with its whiff of the teenage boy's bedroom, is as much a turn-off for many as the subject of architecture. | “Architects and the public are so often disconnected from the technologies that are shaping our world,” he says. “We're trying to take tech out of the lab and fictionalise it in a format that people are familiar with, to make it more accessible than the typical architecture exhibition.” It is a logic that relies on the public having a general understanding and interest in sci-fi – a topic that, with its whiff of the teenage boy's bedroom, is as much a turn-off for many as the subject of architecture. |
| Staged in the blacked-out bowels of the former turbine hall, the scenes of Future Perfect unfold like tableaux in a fairground ghost ride. In one corner, a group of suspended 3D-printing robots, developed by the MIT Media Lab, will soon begin spewing out quick-drying poly-filler, each nozzle working with the others to build an indeterminate digital coral reef. Next door, a laser light show simulates a supercomputer mainframe, with an accompanying soundtrack that responds to visitors' movements. Hanging like a shimmering apparition in the gloom, the highlight of the show is a series of organic prosthetic sculptures by Dutch designer Bart Hess. Suspended like swathes of shed skin, they are the product of a performer being dipped in a vat of water and hot wax – a brilliant piece of drama sadly confined to the opening week. | Staged in the blacked-out bowels of the former turbine hall, the scenes of Future Perfect unfold like tableaux in a fairground ghost ride. In one corner, a group of suspended 3D-printing robots, developed by the MIT Media Lab, will soon begin spewing out quick-drying poly-filler, each nozzle working with the others to build an indeterminate digital coral reef. Next door, a laser light show simulates a supercomputer mainframe, with an accompanying soundtrack that responds to visitors' movements. Hanging like a shimmering apparition in the gloom, the highlight of the show is a series of organic prosthetic sculptures by Dutch designer Bart Hess. Suspended like swathes of shed skin, they are the product of a performer being dipped in a vat of water and hot wax – a brilliant piece of drama sadly confined to the opening week. |
| Young describes these individual projects as fragments of different districts from his imaginary Future Perfect world, the entire thing represented in a styrofoam model of buildings sprouting from craggy cliffs like mutant barnacles. He cites themes from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and is keen to point out that the model was made by special effects designers who worked on Blade Runner and Alien – which adds to the sense that this vision of the future is curiously old-fashioned. The imagery of vast inhabitable computer mainframes conjure a particular brand of retro-futurism that seems to have advanced little since Aldous Huxley dreamed up his Brave New World in the 1930s. | Young describes these individual projects as fragments of different districts from his imaginary Future Perfect world, the entire thing represented in a styrofoam model of buildings sprouting from craggy cliffs like mutant barnacles. He cites themes from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and is keen to point out that the model was made by special effects designers who worked on Blade Runner and Alien – which adds to the sense that this vision of the future is curiously old-fashioned. The imagery of vast inhabitable computer mainframes conjure a particular brand of retro-futurism that seems to have advanced little since Aldous Huxley dreamed up his Brave New World in the 1930s. |
| While Pestana and Young's shows take refuge in fictional realms, two further strands in the centre of town attempt to engage with the institutional and public faces of architectural practice. The Institute Effect, curated by Dani Admiss, has taken over a floor of Lisbon's design and fashion museum, Mude, as a temporary base for 12 international architectural institutions – from New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture to Mexico City's Liga gallery and Istanbul's Salt. Taking up residence for consecutive weeks, each group must set a challenge for the next, and make their home using modular furniture in an environment designed by Fabrica, the communications research arm of clothing giant Benetton. It remains to be seen what will emerge, but again it is questionable how far such institutional machinations are of interest to those outside the rarified industry of writing and talking about architecture. | While Pestana and Young's shows take refuge in fictional realms, two further strands in the centre of town attempt to engage with the institutional and public faces of architectural practice. The Institute Effect, curated by Dani Admiss, has taken over a floor of Lisbon's design and fashion museum, Mude, as a temporary base for 12 international architectural institutions – from New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture to Mexico City's Liga gallery and Istanbul's Salt. Taking up residence for consecutive weeks, each group must set a challenge for the next, and make their home using modular furniture in an environment designed by Fabrica, the communications research arm of clothing giant Benetton. It remains to be seen what will emerge, but again it is questionable how far such institutional machinations are of interest to those outside the rarified industry of writing and talking about architecture. |
| The section of the Triennale most obviously trying to grab the public's attention is organised by Mexican curator José Esparza: New Publics, a programme of lectures, debates and performances, will unfold over the next three months on a big circular stage in Lisbon's Praça da Figueira. | The section of the Triennale most obviously trying to grab the public's attention is organised by Mexican curator José Esparza: New Publics, a programme of lectures, debates and performances, will unfold over the next three months on a big circular stage in Lisbon's Praça da Figueira. |
| In her opening remarks, as the press assembled on the great tilted wooden disc, Galilee used the nature of the stage to talk more broadly about the theme of Close, Closer. “It's about a generation of architects that are more interested in big ideas than the details of buildings,” she said. “The detail of the wooden boards you are standing on is not as important as the fact that we have put a big temporary stage in the square.” | In her opening remarks, as the press assembled on the great tilted wooden disc, Galilee used the nature of the stage to talk more broadly about the theme of Close, Closer. “It's about a generation of architects that are more interested in big ideas than the details of buildings,” she said. “The detail of the wooden boards you are standing on is not as important as the fact that we have put a big temporary stage in the square.” |
| The circular platform was originally intended to tilt with the position of the audience, like a human-powered swingometer, but for practical reasons it now stands on fixed legs. For events during the sweltering daytime, meanwhile, it has been entirely abandoned in favour of the shade provided by the square's equestrian statue. It is perhaps this kind of detail that shows architectural thinking does in fact matter: without it, the bigger conceptual idea is sadly defunct. | The circular platform was originally intended to tilt with the position of the audience, like a human-powered swingometer, but for practical reasons it now stands on fixed legs. For events during the sweltering daytime, meanwhile, it has been entirely abandoned in favour of the shade provided by the square's equestrian statue. It is perhaps this kind of detail that shows architectural thinking does in fact matter: without it, the bigger conceptual idea is sadly defunct. |
| For a Triennale that sets out to ask questions and evolve over its duration, it is far too soon to judge its success. But local architects who attended the opening week feel the theme is timely, and hope it will at least sow the seeds for a long-awaited debate. | For a Triennale that sets out to ask questions and evolve over its duration, it is far too soon to judge its success. But local architects who attended the opening week feel the theme is timely, and hope it will at least sow the seeds for a long-awaited debate. |
| “Portuguese architecture really needs shaking,” says Lucinda Correia, of Lisbon practice Artéria. “In Portugal we really like to build, and we are taught how to make very good buildings in school. But for the current generation with no jobs, there needs to be something more.” | “Portuguese architecture really needs shaking,” says Lucinda Correia, of Lisbon practice Artéria. “In Portugal we really like to build, and we are taught how to make very good buildings in school. But for the current generation with no jobs, there needs to be something more.” |
| “What we are taught is no longer relevant to the current situation,” agrees recent graduate Pedro Snow, of Poligono architects. “If the Triennale breathes in some international fresh air and changes people's thinking then it will have been a useful exercise.” | “What we are taught is no longer relevant to the current situation,” agrees recent graduate Pedro Snow, of Poligono architects. “If the Triennale breathes in some international fresh air and changes people's thinking then it will have been a useful exercise.” |
| Five years ago, when the financial crisis first erupted, the Venice Biennale responded in a similar way, with the theme Beyond Building. “Architecture must go beyond buildings because buildings are not enough,” declared the curator Aaron Betsky, who proceeded to fill the exhibition with bad art, transforming the Arsenale into a gauntlet of inscrutable installations by the ageing architectural elite. | Five years ago, when the financial crisis first erupted, the Venice Biennale responded in a similar way, with the theme Beyond Building. “Architecture must go beyond buildings because buildings are not enough,” declared the curator Aaron Betsky, who proceeded to fill the exhibition with bad art, transforming the Arsenale into a gauntlet of inscrutable installations by the ageing architectural elite. |
| While the Lisbon Triennale has its fair share of bad art, it at least approaches the subject with a more open, questioning perspective and has the potential to develop a life of its own in the programme of public debates beyond the exhibitions' walls. | While the Lisbon Triennale has its fair share of bad art, it at least approaches the subject with a more open, questioning perspective and has the potential to develop a life of its own in the programme of public debates beyond the exhibitions' walls. |
| “It is the most irreverent of the three Triennales so far,” says Graça Fonseca, Lisbon's Deputy Mayor for Economy and Innovation – following the 2007 show on urban voids and 2010 on housing. “And sometimes cities need irreverence.” | “It is the most irreverent of the three Triennales so far,” says Graça Fonseca, Lisbon's Deputy Mayor for Economy and Innovation – following the 2007 show on urban voids and 2010 on housing. “And sometimes cities need irreverence.” |
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