On the occasion of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, the Portuguese pavilion curated by Nuno Brandão Costa and Sérgio Mah will present the exhibition “Public Without Rhetoric” , installed in Palazzo Giustinian Lolin. In response to the Biennale theme Freespace, the exhibition will propose a tour of “Public Buildings”, through 12 projects created in the last ten years by Portuguese architects. These exemples aim to form the basis for a reflection on architecture in public areas, and provide a further contribution to the idea of Freespace.

Resulting of a public competition promoted by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture, through the Directorate-General for the Arts and it has the support of Foundations and Institutional Partners, the project will be installed on the main floor in the Palazzo Giustinian Lolin with a collection of drawings, models and photographs of the 12 selected projects that include temporary structures, buildings or infrastructures dedicated to culture, education, sport and mobility.

These projects are the work of several different generations of Portuguese architects born from the 1930’s to the 1980’s, such as Aires Mateus e Associados,  Álvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura,  Inês Lobo or Miguel Figueira.

The projects will be grouped together to create formal and spatial relationships. The works will be exhibited without chronological or generational order, thus escaping any hierarchical reading. For the curators, the intention is rather to form a compact whole, demonstrating the coherence and rationality of Portuguese architecture, achieved despite a global scenario strongly influenced by the economic crisis.

In parallel, the pavilion will feature a video installation, composed of a set of films created by four contemporary artists recognized for their experience in architectural representation – André Cepeda, Catarina Mourão, Nuno Cera, Salomé Lamas – documenting the current state of the works and the experience of people who inhabit the “freespace” and thus fulfil the public mission of the works.

Texts from exhibition’s press release.

“Public Without Rhetoric”, from May 26th till November 25th 2018
Portuguese Pavilion, Palazzo Giustinian Lolin – Headquaters of the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, S. Marco 2893, Venice
Curators: Nuno Brandão Costa and Sérgio Mah
Represented Architects: Aires Mateus e Associados (Manuel Mateus and Francisco Mateus), Álvaro Siza, Barbas Lopes Arquitectos (Patrícia Barbas and Diogo Seixas Lopes), Carlos Prata, depA (Carlos Azevedo, João Crisóstomo and Luís Sobral), Diogo Aguiar Studio, Eduardo Souto de Moura, FAHR 021.3 (Filipa Frois Almeida and Hugo Reis), Fala Atelier (Ana Luísa Soares, Filipe Magalhães and Ahmed Belkhodja), Gonçalo Byrne, Inês Lobo, João Luís Carrilho da Graça, João Mendes Ribeiro, Menos é Mais (Cristina Guedes and Francisco Vieira de Campos), Miguel Figueira, Ottotto (Teresa Otto), Ricardo Bak Gordon, SAMI (Miguel Vieira and Inês Vieira da Silva), Serôdio Furtado Associados (João Pedro Serôdio and Isabel Furtado) ond Tiago Figueiredo.
Organization: Ministry of Culture of Portugal
Commissioner: Directorate-General for the Arts
Artists invited: André Cepeda, Catarina Mourão, Nuno Cera, Salomé Lamas