Exploring 'The Form of Form' at the 2016 Lisbon Architecture Triennale
'Architecture is a complex and articulated process but if you lose the process and only keep the form you lose the core of architectural practice,' says André Tavares, co-curator of the fourth Lisbon Architecture Triennale, entitled 'The Form of Form'. So many decisions are taken by engineers, specialists in planning and fire regulations, he continues, 'that when the architect arrives on the scene the building is often pre-designed and he may be doomed to just building a beautiful façade'.
The Triennale, curated by Tavares and the late Diogo Seixas Lopes, opened last week with the aim of exploring all the strands that make up architecture, many of them invisible. Themes rarely considered – but of fundamental importance – include the relationship between client and architect or contractor and developer, changing social contexts, labour conditions on building sites and the economic impact of the construction industry.
The central exhibition, also called 'The Form of Form' and curated by Lopes, is located on the patio outside the newly inaugurated MAAT (Architecture, Art and Technology) Museum. This installation saw three architecture practices – Belgium's Office KGDVS, Johnston Marklee from the US and Porto-based Nuno Brandão Costa – choose elements and spaces from each other’s designs and put them together in a new structure composed of 12 interlinked ‘rooms’. Some are several storeys high, others low-slung with domed ceilings. Some are covered, others open to the elements. 'You can read each space individually,' says Costa, 'or you can go through the spaces in a fluid way and experience this as a total space.'
On the walls of the different rooms are a compendium of architectural forms selected by Paris-based studio Socks that range from drawings of Rome by Piranesi to plans of a millennia-old Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia or a model of an agricultural city design concept by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa.
Arguably the most interesting element is the structure itself, which offers a jarring yet strangely harmonious juxtaposition of spaces. By putting spaces together that were never intended to co-habit, new relations and typographies of space are forged. Minimalist white interiors are contrasted with raw steel frame exteriors, and arched doorways bleed into rectilinear open-air courtyards.
Seen against the red brick backdrop of the Tejo Power Station (also part of MAAT) and the endless blue Lisbon skies, the result is surprising, layered, mesmerising and provocative. It poses difficult questions about authorship and looks at how form can be a universal language that brings together architects from around the world. 'It works very much also as a grammar of architecture,' says Kersten Geers of Office KGDVS. 'You realise that despite superficial differences as practices, the way you think about form has an enormous amount of parallels.'
INFORMATION
’The Form of Form’ is on view until 12 December. For more information, visit the Lisbon Architecture Triennale website
Photography: Tiago Casanova
ADDRESS
MAAT
Av Brasília
1300-598 Lisbon
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Giovanna Dunmall is a freelance journalist based in London and West Wales who writes about architecture, culture, travel and design for international publications including The National, Wallpaper*, Azure, Detail, Damn, Conde Nast Traveller, AD India, Interior Design, Design Anthology and others. She also does editing, translation and copy writing work for architecture practices, design brands and cultural organisations.
-
‘Terror of Beauty’: artist Sarah Amrani explores AI technology as a tool for self-expression
‘Terror of Beauty’ by Sarah Amrani, a new exhibition at Foam, examines how technology is shaping beauty standards. Zoe Whitfield speaks with the artist for Wallpaper*
By Zoe Whitfield Published
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been doing this week
A week in the world of Wallpaper*. Here's how our editors have been entertaining themselves in the run up to Christmas
By Hannah Tindle Published
-
Fendi’s latest Design Miami showcase collaboration brims with curiosity and intrigue
Fendi’s latest Design Miami showcase is a collaboration with curiosity-provoking furniture designer Lewis Kemmenoe
By Henrietta Thompson Published
-
Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024: meet the practices
In the Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2024, our latest guide to exciting, emerging practices from around the world, 20 young studios show off their projects and passion
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Branco del Rio's House AA8 brings a pop of colour to its Portuguese neighbourhood
Based in Portugal, Branco del Rio Arquitectos joins the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios
By Tianna Williams Published
-
Gulbenkian Foundation's new art centre by Kengo Kuma is light and inviting
Lisbon's Gulbenkian Foundation reveals its redesign and new contemporary art museum, Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM), by Kengo Kuma with landscape architects VDLA
By Amah-Rose Mcknight Abrams Published
-
City Cortex celebrates cork’s versatility with public installations in Lisbon
City Cortex, an urban project in Lisbon developed by Amorim, celebrates cork as a sustainable material with installations by Gabriel Calatrava, Leong Leong, Yves Behar and more
By Nana Ama Owusu-Ansah Published
-
Casa e a Pedra is a Porto home emerging from a rocky context
Casa e a Pedra by architect François Leite is an urban residential reinvention in Porto, Portugal
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Álvaro Siza Wing expands archive and exhibition space in Porto’s Museu Serralves
Álvaro Siza returns to Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, crafting his namesake new wing that just opened to the public
By Josh Fenton Published
-
This Portuguese Pavilion in the Garden is a dramatic space for entertaining
Pavilion in the Garden by Spaceworkers is an event space in Portugal, opening up to its leafy setting through dramatic, minimalist architecture
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Casa M is a climate-sensitive home in Portugal’s Algarve
Casa M, an urban home in the Algarve, makes the most of local techniques and the region’s climate in a design by its owners, Portuguese architects A-Lab Architecture
By Stacy Suaya Published