News

An exhibition curated by me with a central piece by Luísa Bebiano and a photographic essay by Paulo Catrica about the Portuguese Parliament and the relations between space and power is opening today. The exhibition will be on display between February 17th and April 15th at Casa da Arquitectura, in Matosinhos.

Curated by Luís Santiago Baptista, the exhibition Fernando Guerra: X-Ray of a photographic practice will open next Tuesday, July 11, at 7 p.m., at CCB - Centro Cultural de Belém. The exhibition will feature a three voice narrated text written by me on the debate about the definition of architectural photography. 

Curated Curators (II) is the second exhibition within a cycle of three curated by the Portuguese artists Sara & André for the gallery Zaratan - Arte Contemporânea. For this second take, they've asked curators, whose primary education is from a different background, but have been working on art exhibitions or across fields, to select a work of art or a piece of an exhibition that they have curated. Following this kind invitation, I've asked the Portuguese artist Paulo Catrica to display a photograph of the series "Places of Intimacy," initially thought for an exhibition that did not take place at the Convent of Jesus in Setúbal, along with a work developed in parallel with SAMI Arquitectos. The exhibition will open this Thursday, 18 of May (2017). 

On the 18th of April, Scopio Sophia will be launched at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon (FAUBL), a magazine I co-edit as part of the work that has been developed within the research group for Representation and Images of Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP). Edward Dimendberg was the invited editor for this first number and Iñaki Bergera for the upcoming number. The Call for Papers is already open. Check the magazine's website.

I have the pleasure of being co-curator of Utopia / Dystopia: A Paradigm Shift together with João Laia and Pedro Gadanho that will be on display at MAAT from March 22 to August 21, 2017. 

Read the article on e-flux!

My latest peer-reviewed essay on Contour Journal (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne).

 Looking forward to reading your reviews!

Read essay on Contour Journal

Download PDF

I'll take part in the exhibition 24 Hours at Galeria de Arquitectura / Gallery of Architecture opening this Saturday, 14th January from 4 p.m. on (Address: Rua do Rosário, 191, Porto).

From the curators Andreia Garcia and Diogo Aguiar: "24 Hours is an exhibition that highlights the amount of specialized architectural information that is launched in the cyber world in just one day, chosen at random, taking as reference some of the most visited architectural sites in the world."

On the 23rd of June, I'll be presenting my paper "Through an Intensive Architecture: the Composition of Silence as an Architectonic Sensation”, at The Place of Silence: Experience, Environment, and Affect International Conference, at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

I’ll be discussing how we compose Silence in architecture, understanding it as an aesthetic and spatial sensation. The Cemetery in Malmö, by Lewerentz, and the Steilneset Memorial in Vardø, by Zumthor, are two of the examples to be analysed where one may find silence as an architectonic sensation, a sensation that fills the interval of an intensive body-space independently of time and seasons. Relevantly, the two examples are connected to certain understandings of death and, nevertheless, both compose a pure sensation of silence in which no trace of melancholy is left and space never becomes sentimental.

For more information, please visit the conference's website.

On Wednesday, May 11th, at 6.30 p.m., at the Video Library of the Lisbon Municipal Archives (Largo do Calvário, n.º 2), within the second edition of the Imaginary Topographies cycle dedicated to architecture (which will occur during the month of May with a total of 4 sessions), I will be presenting a personal selection of a few sequences of the film “Ninguém Duas Vezes”, by Jorge Silva Melo, and talk along with the director Jorge Silva Melo and Francisco Frazão (researcher and programmer at Culturgest). For more info about the event, please follow this link (in Portuguese).

Next Wednesday, 23rd of March, I'll be talking about "Instruments of Critique", along with Jorge Figueira, Luís Santiago Baptista, and Gabriela Raposo as moderator. This is a parallel event to the exhibition "Modern Masterpieces Revisited Series", by Luís Santiago Baptista, currently on display at the Note Gallery and to which catalogue I've written the essay "Mix Tapes". 

Next Wednesday, 16th of March, I'll be talking about the Habitar Portugal 2009-2011 edition, which I've curated together with Rita Dourado and Maria Rita Pais, along with the curators of all previous editions. This is a parallel event to the present edition of Habitar Portugal 2012-2014, currently on display at the Porto Municipal Gallery. Feel free to come and participate in the debate!

On the 19th of February, I'll be speaking about the journey as research lab in architecture, from the personal experience of the journey I made between June and August 2014 to Japan, Centre and North Europe, in search of an Intensive Architecture. The talk is part of a wider panel around an upcoming journey to some of the most important works by Fernando Távora. For more information, please visit: www.revisitavora.wordpress.com. 

The Permanent Performance & Philosophy Seminar held in the context of the Performance & Philosophy Department of AELab (Aesthetics and Philosophy Laboratory for Artistic Practices of the IFILNOVA - Institute of Philosophy of the Nova University in Lisbon) has as goal to constitute itself as a platform for discussion and experimentation in the performance and philosophy fields in their theoretical and practice dimensions, uniting researchers and artists.

The fourth session will be held by me under the title "How to compose sensations in architecture - construction of a Map of Intensities". The Seminar will take place on the 27th of January of 2016, between 6-8 p.m., Room 0.06, Building I&D / Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Nova University in Lisbon (Avenida de Berna 26). These sessions are free and open to all interested. 

O Seminário Permanente em Performance e Filosofia, realizado no contexto da secção de Performance e Filosofia do AELab - Laboratório de Estética e de Filosofia das Práticas Artísticas do IFILNOVA - Instituto de Filosofia da Nova, tem por objectivo constituir-se como uma plataforma de discussão e experimentação entre as áreas da performance e da filosofia nas suas dimensões teóricas e práticas, reunindo investigadores e artistas. 

A quarta sessão consiste no Seminário da investigadora Pós-Doc Susana Ventura, intitulado "Como compor sensações em arquitectura - construção de um mapa intensivo". O seminário terá lugar no dia 27 de Janeiro de 2016, entre as 18h00 e as 20h00, na sala 0.06, Edifício I&D / Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Avenida de Berna 26, Lisboa). Estas sessões são livres e abertas a todos os interessados.

On the 2nd of December, at 3.00 p.m., I'll be lecturing at the School of Architecture of the University of Évora about the composition of intimacy as a spatial sensation. 

On the 21st of November morning (panel 19), I'll be presenting my paper "Intensive Architecture: an inexistent aesthetic category in the Theory of Architecture - through the study of silence as a spatial sensation", at the This Thing Called Theory Conference (AHRA 2015 - 12th International Architectural Humanities Research Association Conference), at the Leeds Beckett University, School of Art, Architecture and Design.

I'll discuss how "Intensive architecture" is an inexistent category in the theory of architecture, stemming from the aesthetic problem of sensation, which aims to understand how certain sensations, such as intimacy, silence, contemplation, among others, are composed in space and sustained through time (as the eternal quality of the work of art. 

The Cemetery in Malmö, by Lewerentz, and the Steilneset Memorial in Vardø, by Zumthor, are the two examples to be analysed where one may find silence as a spatial sensation that fills the interval of an intensive body-space, independently of time and seasons.

Visit the website

My three short films "Intimacy", "Silence", "Contemplation" will be displayed at video station #1 at Arquiteturas Film Festival Lisbon 2015, at Forum Lisboa Mezzanine, from the 1st until the 4th of October.

The three films – “Intimacy”, “Silence”, “Contemplation” – result from an expedition journey to an intensive architecture through Japan, Center and North Europe, conducted between June and August of 2014, within the Fernando Távora’s Award and a Post-Doctoral research project. They are mainly experimental and instrumental films that use the empirical experience as first matter of research and expression. Each film seeks to unveil how each one of the sensations is composed in the space, the mechanisms, artifices and matters of expression that gave birth to it, and that belong insomuch to the landscape, where the work belongs, as to the imagination it awakens or the body that inhabits, even if absent.

Visit the website.

""What is architecture?" is, by nature, an open question. In a certain way, the history of the discipline can be understood as a sequence of definitions that, trying to stabilize the meaning of architecture, paradoxically put it in motion. Therefore, in the universe of possible answers to this question, relations, interceptions and oppositions emerge, which may, more than anything, keep the interrogative condition. In the limit, it is for not knowing the answer limits. The replacement of the question, one and another time again, expresses the vitality and plurality inherent in the very definition of architecture. Under the project of the online residencies RAUM platform, we pose this question to a group of 15 Portuguese Architects who were born after the revolution of 1974. If the question is in textual mode, the answer that we have required is visual, give the structural relationship that architects establish with images. In a broad spectrum of disciplinary activity, we asked these young architects to present a definition of architecture in the form of a triptych".