The Sommer Pavilion in the Garden

The Cascais Municipality promoted the “Sommer Pavilion” Competition for Ideas on Architecture, between May and July of 2018, on a joint initiative with Cascais 2018 European Youth Capital, for the construction of a temporary pavilion at Parada Garden, to celebrate contemporary architectural production and the theme Water. The winning pavilion was going to be built as in plan.

Coinciding with the functioning period of the winning pavilion, the exhibition The Sommer Pavilion in the Garden presented the remaining proposals on competition. The main idea was to create a truly public exhibition, in a public space located at the heart of the city, and daily crossed by its inhabitants and tourists.

The wooden exhibition support allowed the exhibition to dissolve in the garden (originally, the back face was to be a mirror to reflect the treetops and further attenuate the presence of the exhibition supports) with images directly printed on the wood panels, and each support was located in the position that coincided with the simulated view in a way everyone could easily understand each proposal and its transformation of the place in the real space of the garden.

Strolling through the various proposals, the singular spaces and moments that characterise the garden and which each proposal sought to reveal will be understood - secluded living spaces, the central space in memory of Costa Pinto, the relation to the Sommer house, the winding walkways and the green lawn areas - awakening, in turn, our imagination for the multitude of explored approaches, the different imagery and references, the plurality of forms and distinct materials, and for the garden’s own history, reminding of its various transformations through the times (as the former existence of a lake or a gazebo).

The exhibition sought, lastly, to make known the infinite plastic capability of architecture to celebrate history and the place!