Debates

Thu. 23 September / 11:00 / Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Venice

No State Council

Live stream available here

Organisers
Fernanda Fragateiro & Jorge Carvalho

Participants
Ângela Ferreira, Gérard Lambert, Paulo Tavares & Rui Mendes

info

Now, what are the ways to proceed?
It could be said that the paths go in the direction of expansion, comprising domestication of nature, extraction, colonisation, urbanisation, and acceleration; or that they are redirected towards contraction, covering re-naturalisation, relocation, repair, and memory.
However, in an architectural design process, the paths start to wind and intersect, because all the players are committed to something different that they have to do now.
In the current time of processes being overly determined by economic factors, in the infrastructure and logistics of the cities how should we pursue the representation of less powerful ways of life? Can the design of a riverfront “return our gaze” to institutional powers when it is entangled with them? Can we build symbols on the streets that are as challenging as those displayed in museums? And what is demonstrated when some of these ways of life recover their representation in micro-utopic processes of uses of space?
It will be by debating the moments of conflict, negotiations, and alliances in concrete design processes that we will be able to distinguish the paths that face us.

PARTICIPANTS
Ângela Ferreira Ângela Ferreira was born in Maputo, Mozambique and grew up in South Africa. She earned her MFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town. She lives in Lisbon and teaches Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon, where she did her PhD in 2016. Angela Ferreira's work focuses on the ongoing impact of colonialism and postcolonialism on contemporary society. She represented Portugal at the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007, continuing her research into the ways in which European Modernism has adapted or failed to adapt to the realities of the African continent, by tracing the history of Jean Prouvé's 'Maison Tropicale'
She studied the role of radio broadcasts during the African liberation and independence wars and over many years has been building a series of talk towers to broadcast poems.

Gérard Lambert Historian and writer, Gérard Lambert, was (in 2000) one of the founders and later spokesperson of Acipa, the main organisation that contributed to the creation and extension of the Zad de Notre-Dame des Landes, near Nantes (France ), a place with a rich experience of free architecture under collective management that has been taking place since 2007.
This group of citizens successfully resisted the project of a new airport, putting into practice an alternative way of life in the same place.

Paulo Tavares Paulo Tavares is an architect, writer and curator. His work has been included in global exhibitions and publications, including the Istanbul Design Biennial and the São Paulo Art Biennial.
He is the author of the books Selva Jurídica (2014), Memória da Terra (2018) and Des-Habitat (2019).
In 2017, he created the autónoma agency, a platform dedicated to urban research and intervention and was co-curator of the Chicago Architecture Biennale in 2019.
He has been analysing the construction of road infrastructure and the disappearance of built-up settlements and local communities in the largest forest in the world.

Rui Mendes Rui Mendes is an architect essentially focused on the practice of design and the teaching of architecture.
His projects were presented at the Lisbon Triennale of 2010 and 2016 and at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012.
He is a professor at Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa and at Universidade de Évora. He was co-editor of Jornal Arquitectos between 2012 and 2015 and founder of the “Laboratório de Arquitectura” launched in 2017. Co-curator, with Marta Labastida, of the university competition “Sines – Logísticas à Beira-Mar” for TAL 2016 (FAD 2017 Awards selection). He received a PhD scholarship from the FCT with “Projecto de Sines e a Nova Cidade de Santo André” (Project of Sines and the New City of Santo André).
Rui Mendes has been designing for years in a riverside territory and ecosystem where the construction of a new airport is being studied.

ORGANISERS
Fernanda Fragateiro Fernanda Fragateiro (Montijo, 1962) lives and works in Lisbon.
Fragateiro's projects are characterised by a great interest in rethinking and researching modernist practices. Her practice involves an archaeological approach to the social, political and aesthetic history of Modernism through continued research of archival material, documents, and objects.

Jorge Carvalho Jorge Carvalho (b. 1964) graduated in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of Porto in 1990.
In 1991, together with Teresa Novais, he founded aNC arquiitectos. The recognition of his projects resulted in awards, publications in the specialist press and invitations to lectures in Europe, South America, and Asia.
He is a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra. He has been a guest critic in external evaluations of projects in several Portuguese and European schools of architecture.
He also carries out various activities within the scope of disciplinary debate on the design process. He is co-author of the book Poder/Arquitectura, published by Casa da Arquitectura / Lars Müller.

Fri. 24 September / 11:00 / Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Venice

Caring Assemblies: Positions on a Space-to-Come

Live stream available here

Organisers
Bartlebooth – Antonio Giráldez López & Pablo Ibáñez Ferrera

Participants
Candela Morado, Husos, Isabel Gutiérrez Sánchez & Mariana Pestana

info

Prototype of a Host and Nectar Garden Building in Cali, Colombia, by Husos Architects © Manuel Salinas, courtesy of Husos Architects

There is no need to read Butler or Agamben to understand that there are bodies that matter more than others. Spatial practice, operating between the submission to liberal contexts and a claimed "autonomy", systematically excludes bodies, agents and entities. Activists, citizens, and platforms in 2008-crisis-ridden cities built powerful protocols and narratives that unveiled the power of Architecture as a tool for political violence. Contemporary thought and new political imaginaries have outlined the fields of a space to come. But, how to construct spatial practices that care of and care for while facing the conflicts that capitalist production frameworks present? How can we build a caring architectural practice beyond social reproduction and human bodies? Which should be the vectors of spatial practice to-come? Caring assemblies proposes the creation of an assemblage of discourses and narratives, consensus and dissensions, towards an architecture of care, notes for a committed, critical, and care-ful spatial practice.

PARTICIPANTSCandela Morado
Candela Morado is an anthropologist (UCM) and architect (ETSAM), with specialization in Urban Studies and Territorial Planning. She did her PhD on collective methods of urban life sustenance in Bogotá (Colombia) at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Her areas of interest stand at the crossroad of critical urbanism, urban anthropology, and feminist studies of science.

Husos
Husos is an office that operates in the fields of architecture, urban planning and micro-landscaping, understood as practices of social transformation. It investigates how these areas mediate the relationships that constitute our day to day; with non-human nature and between species, involving gender, labor and colonial dynamics. It does so through research and design, theory and practice. It was founded in Madrid by Diego Barajas and Camilo García and from this city, it operates regularly between Spain and Colombia.

Isabel Gutiérrez Sanchéz
She is an architect (ETSAM) and anthropologist (UCM), and holds a MSc City Design & Social Science (LSE). She did her PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) on crossings among care, citizenship, commoning and space in self-organised initiatives in Athens. She teaches at the Bartlett School of Planning. She is particularly interested in the study and production of counter-narratives and imaginaries through ethnography, political fictions, architectural design and art projects.

Mariana Pestana She is an architect and independent curator interested in critical social practice and the role of fiction in design for an age marked by technological progress and an ecological crisis. She is a member of the collective The Decorators, and recently co-curated the exhibitions The Future Starts Here (V&A) and Eco Visionaries: Art and Architecture After the Anthropocene at (MAAT, Matadero & Royal Academy). She is currently curating the 5th Istanbul Design Biennale Empathy Revisited: designs for more than one.

ORGANISERS
Bartlebooth Bartlebooth is a publishing and research platform that examines contemporary spatial practice, founded in 2013 and led by Antonio Giráldez López (1990) and Pablo Ibáñez Ferrera (1992). Their work has been awarded by the Iberoamerican Biennial BIAU and the Spanish Biennial BEAU, exhibited in spaces such as the Spanish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale, Museo Reina Sofía, Matadero (Madrid) and the MAO Museum (Ljubljana). They are currently residents at the Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.

*Proposal selected by open-call.

Previous Events

Debating Lisbon’s Future
Housing Strategy

Organisers
Gennaro Giacalone, João Romão & Margarida Leão

Participants
Filipa Roseta, Inês Lobo, Luís Mendes & Ricardo Veludo

full debate & info

Housing is one of the defining pillars of democratic societies. The total of the State Budgets for housing in 2019 and 2020 was €230 million. This benchmark figure will be added to with €1.633 billion in 2021-2026, via the European RRP subsidy.
Despite the recent strategies proposed in the New Generation of Housing Policies, little debate on a municipal level has covered civil society or agents of territorial transformation.
After four weeks of public on-line discussion, we invited the councilman for urbanism of Lisbon Municipal Council, Ricardo Veludo; the architect Inês Lobo; Filipa Roseta, member of parliament and architect and, finally,geographer and activist Luís Mendes to a debate on property, participation, and typology for the city of Lisbon.
We took the proximity in time of the Venice Architectural Biennale and the local elections in Portugal, as an opportunity to make room for democratic dialogue in the construction of the city and to reclaim for architects as a class that is politically committed to the question, How will we live together?

PARTICIPANTS
Filipa Roseta
Member of the Portuguese parliament since 2019.
Architect graduated in 1996 from FAUTL. Researcher at CIAUD and member of the Research Academy – European Association for Architectural Education. She concluded her Master's degree in Contemporary Architectural Culture at FAUL in 2001 and her PhD in 2009 at the Royal College of Art, in London. Co-founder of the Roseta Vaz Monteiro studio in 2001.
Councilwoman for Urbanism at the Cascais Municipal Council in 2017-2020.

Inês Lobo

Architect graduated from Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa in 1989. She started her professional career in 1989 and founded the Inês Lobo Arquitectos studio in 2002. She is professor of Architectural Project at UAL and FAUL. In 1999 she received the title of Officer of the Order of Merit from the President of Portugal.
Curator and commissioner of Architecture exhibitions, including the Portuguese representation of the Venice Biennale in 2012 and the VIII Iberoamerican Architecture and Urbanism Biennale.

Luís Mendes
Graduate of Geography and Master’s in Urban Studies 2008 by Faculdade de Letras – UL. Invited Assistant Lecturer at FAUL, ESEL, and IGOT. Member of the Portuguese Association of Geographers and member of the board of the Association of Lisbon Tenants since 2018. Researcher of Urban Studies, specifically on gentrification and urban regeneration. Technical and scientific consultant and author of more than 200 titles.

Ricardo Veludo

Councilman for Planning, Urbanism, Relations with Residents and Participation of the Lisbon Municipal Council since 2019.
Graduate of Territorial Engineering in 1999 from Instituto Superior Técnico, with post-graduate studies in Regional and Urban Planning, Urbanism and Land Planning, Real Estate Management and Valuation.nHe researches models of participation and citizen government. He was the coordinator of the team responsible for the Affordable Rent Programme of the Lisbon Municipal Council.
Activist of the Morar em Lisboa (Living in Lisbon) movement.

ORGANISERS

Gennaro Giacalone

Master degree in Architecture at Politecnico di Milano in 2018, wrote a thesis on turistification’s social and architectural impacts in Lisbon, collaborating with Roberta Pellè. Wrote the paper Possible strategies to break the bond between urban requalification and gentrification in collaboration with Roberta Pellè and Luís Mendes. Currently works with HAJE Arquitectos in Lisbon.

João Romão

Master degree in Architecture at FAUL in 2020, completed the first year of master’s degrees at FAU University of São Paulo. Wrote a thesis on flexible housing and real estate market. In 2014 João was co-founder of Atelier Angular. Between 2017-2019 worked in collaboration with Carlos Aragão and João Pombeiro. In 2019 developped the workshop Protest Project, in collaboration with Hugo Jammes.

Margarida Leão

Master degree in Architecture at FAUL in 2015, completed the first year of master’s degrees at FADU University of Buenos Aires. Wrote a thesis about architecture as an instrument of political affirmation. She started her professional practice in 2016 as a collaborator in PLCO Arquitectos and Ventura Trindade Arquitectos. During the last years, worked in Switzerland with Stefan Wülser, Nicolaj Bechtel and Didier Balissat.

*Proposal selected by open-call.

Instant City

Organisers
Bernardo Amaral & Carlos Machado e Moura

Participants
Manuel Herz, Maria Neto & Michel Agier

full debate & info

This debate aims to discuss emergency settlements for displaced populations worldwide due to war or political, climatic and sanitary conditions. There are currently 80 million refugees, many in camps that are the spatialisation of expulsion and exclusion, with precarious safety and hygiene conditions. Alongside, a billion people live in slums, ever-growing geographies of social vulnerability. While architecture and urban planning generally fall short in responding, what can we learn from these instant cities? What do they reveal about the role of architecture in the humanitarian dilemma and our unstable world? Some consider informal solutions more efficient than over-planned schemes; others claim the value of camps dwellers’ DIY solutions as agents of production of space. Alongside, architects keep developing modular and mobile housing systems. Which perspectives apply to migrant settlements? Enquiring how will we live together requires focusing on the physical expressions of conflict.

PARTICIPANTS Manuel Herz
Architect based in Basel. His recent projects include the synagogue in Mainz and housing schemes in Germany, Switzerland and France. He taught at the ETH Zurich, Harvard GSD and currently the University of Basel. His research focuses on migration, nation-building and spaces of refuge. Curator of the Western Sahara Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016, his books include Nairobi: Migration Shaping the City and From Camp to City: Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara.

Maria Neto
Architect, assistant lecturer at DECA-UBI and researcher at CEAU-FAUP, COOPUAH and ICHaB-ETSAM. PhD candidate on refugee camps in protracted situations, funded by FCT. With postgraduate studies in Development of Human Settlements in the Third World (ICHaBETSAM) and professional training in Humanitarian Shelter Coordination (IFRC/UNCHR/Oxford Brookes Univ.), she collaborated with UNHCR and BRC on refugee support. Recipient of Prémio Távora 2016 with Invisible cities of Dadaab.

Michel Agier
Anthropologist, Professor (Directeur d’études) at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS Paris) and Senior Researcher at Institut de Recherches pour le Développement (IRD). Having published prolifically, his main interests are Human Globalisation, Exile and Urban Marginalities. After several years of fieldwork investigations in West Africa and Latin America, he conducts personal and collective researches in Africa, Middle East and Europe on migrations and refuges.

ORGANISERS
Bernardo Amaral
Architect, researcher and activist based in Porto. His ongoing PhD research at FCTUC-DARQ is focused on design methodologies of self-organised architecture collectives working with right-to-housing movements. At his studio, BAAU, much of their practice deals with the refurbishment of old buildings for affordable housing. Bernardo is also tutor and lecturer in several workshops and seminars. Currently, he teaches in a postgraduation course at ESAP.

Carlos Machado e Moura
Architect, curator, PhD candidate and researcher at CEAU-FAUP. Alongside his practice with MAVAA, he is the author of books like Building Views (2017) and a former member of Jornal Arquitectos’ editorial team. Currently, Carlos collaborates with panoramah!®, is an MC member of CA18126 Writing urban places and a researcher of (EU)ROPA – Rise of Portuguese Architecture. In 2020 he was a recipient of Prémio Távora and an honourable mention in Premio Architetto Italiano.

*Proposal selected by open-call.

Lines of Violence

Organiser
Patrícia Robalo

Participants
Aitor Varea Oro, Ana Bigotte Vieira, Helena Barbosa Amaro & Lígia Nunes

full debate & info

In 1961, Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford published, almost simultaneously, their most influential works. The co-existence of their visions in public debate lead to a conflict, still unsolved, in architecture and urbanism.
Conflict makes contemporary urbanization more tangible, challenging the established order and its lines of violence. But to analyze conflict, or to be in conflict, focus our minds in the production of the conflict itself. It leads to dualist ways of thinking, of mutual meaning, rationality and sensibility. Warlike lexicon seems inevitable - fight, resistance, emergency, occupy, resilience, strategy, extinction. All is connected – health, housing, mobility, segregation, economy, politics, culture. Reasons are fundamental to urbanity, to life, to democracy and our existence. Is there guidance on dreams, hope and knowledge when we live in conflict? Or, is their absence the trigger to confront public perception to the way we are building the places we live in.

PARTICIPANTS Aitor Varea Oro
Architect and through his work aims to democratise access to decent housing. His professional practice, in Spain and Portugal, promotes liaison between institutions, academia, and civil society by creating a common language, in order to shorten distances between those that have the problem and those that have a solution. His biggest learning to date is the need to work with everyone and to talk, particularly, to those who are not yet aware of the problem.

Ana Bigotte Vieira
Part of the scheduling team of the Bairro Alto Theatre, under the artistic direction of Francisco Frazão, as a discourse programmer. She graduates in Modern and Contemporary History (ISCTE), specialising in Contemporary Culture and Philosophy (FCSH-UNL), and in Theatre Studies (UL). Her Doctoral thesis received an Honourable Mention from the Mário Soares Foundation. She is co-founder of baldio | Estudos de Performance and a playwright. She translates plays and philosophy.

Helena Barbosa Amaro
Graduate of Law from FDUC, post-graduate of Law of Urbanism, Environment and Land Planning by CEAU. She has a Doctorate in Architecture from FAUP, specialising in Urban Dynamics and Forms. Researcher at CEAU, and scholar at FCT. Doctorate focusing on Vale do Ave, in the area of mobility, housing, and public policies.

Ligia Nunes
Born in Lisbon, she graduated in Architecture from FAUTL and has a doctorate from ETSA of Universidad de Coruña. She opened a studio and started teaching Architecture in 1997, in the areas of Project, Theory, and History of Architecture. She is an assistant professor on the Master's and Doctorate at DAULP and works on the post-graduate course in collaborative territories at ISCTE. She is a member of CEAU and FAUP. She founded Architects without Borders Portugal and heads Architecture Sans Frontieres Internacional.

ORGANISER Patrícia Robalo
Architect and lives and works in Lisbon where she co-created the MUTA studio. She combines her architectural design work with incursions into curatorship. Namely for: the commission of Open House Lisboa 2019 – Lisboa Sem Centro; andOutra Lisboa – Viagens num Espaço Urbano Maior, the programming for which was a project associated to the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2016. She regularly organises and takes part in debates, exhibitions, and other forms of architectural and urban promotion.

*Proposal selected by open-call.

Wed. 16 Junho / Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa
Palácio Sinel de Cordes

Public Housing – No Silver Bullet

Organisers
Samuel de Brito Gonçalves

Participants
Álvaro Domingues, Helena Roseta, Joana Couceiro, Luís Urbano & Sónia Alves

full debate & info

This is a moment of an unprecedented challenge. With the certainty of a new economic crisis haunting this decade, the public housing policy becomes a national emergency. While the housing problem grows, new strategies and public funds are being drafted to tackle it. It is crucial to ensure their proper implementation, avoiding errors from the past, and fostering flexible solutions, adapted to the territory’s contradictory mosaic. It is a long-known challenge, but there isn’t still a silver bullet. This is the brief for the Public Housing – No Silver Bullet debate, a prospective view to complement the historical and critical data on display at the In Conflict exhibition, the Portuguese Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura. This event brings together five participants. Two architects will drive the discussion, by questioning (and provoking) three experts in different fields - geography, sociology and politics - in order to outline driven principals for an imperative new national public housing approach.

PARTICIPANTS
Álvaro Domingues
He is a geographer, PhD in Human Geography, researcher and Professor at FAUP. He worked alongside the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Foundation for Science and Technology, the Portuguese Association of Architects (OA), among others, in numerous research projects and publications. Its activity focuses on Human Geography, Landscape, Urbanism and Urban Policy. Álvaro writes regularly for the Portuguese newspaper “Público”.

Helena Roseta
Architect, has dedicated her life to the public cause serving as mayor, city councillor, Parliament deputy and Portuguese representative in the Council of Europe. Was President of the Portuguese Association of Architects (OA) from 2001 to 2007. Helena led some of the most important public initiatives for housing and citizen participation, such as the municipal BIP-ZIP (awarded as Best Practice in Citizen Participation in 2013 by the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy), the Housing Basic Law (2019), and the “Healthy Neighbourhoods” Program in 2020.

Joana Couceiro Architect, researcher and professor graduated by the Architecture Department at University of Coimbra (2005) and PhD by the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (2018) with a thesis entitled “Chiado e Estilo. A importância da noção de Estilo na construção do Chiado de Siza”. She is an invited assistant professor at FAUP since 2013, on the subject of History of Modern Architecture, and a supervisor of Master’s Degree dissertations and PhD Thesis. She is a co-founder of the publishing house, bookshop and gallery Circo de Ideias (2008/2018). In the curatorial field she also highlights the five editions of PechaKucha Night Porto (2008/2010) and the fifth edition of Open House Porto (2019). Author of several texts and articles, she also has been the co-author of various projects, some of which were published in leading journals.

Luís Urbano
Luís Urbano (Coimbra, 1972) is an architect and teacher at the Faculty of Architecture of Porto University. He has a doctoral degree from the same university, with the final thesis Between two worlds. Architecture and Cinema in Portugal, 1959-1974. He works as an editor at JACK magazine - Journal on Architecture and Cinema and he is the author of Histórias Simples (2013). He directed short films such as Sizígia (2012, Jury Special Price, Clermont-Ferrand Festival, França, 2013), A Casa do Lado (2012) Como se Desenha uma Casa (2014) and the documentary Morada (2019). He is the director of Cultural Association JackBackPack and the vice-president of Marques da Silva Foundation.

Sónia Alves
She is a research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of University of Lisbon, and a visiting researcher at the BUILD - Department of the Built Environment, Aalborg University. Her work focuses primarily on aspects of comparative planning and urban policy and the differential impact of housing policies upon social groups and areas within cities. Major themes in her research have included analysis of the relationship between planning and housing; and between rent regulation and housing rehabilitation in Portugal and in European housing systems.

DOCUMENTARY EXHIBITION: MORADA2019 | 23'
Director: Luís Urbano
Production: JackBackPack and Mapa da Habitação

The documentary "Morada" proposes a cinematographic map of the housing architecture supported by the Portuguese state, studied in the research project "Mapping Public Housing". Through a continuous movement in a fictitious address, contexts are suggested and some of the most emblematic buildings constructed by public housing programs are presented, in one of the most contested periods of recent Portuguese history.

ORGANISER
Samuel Gonçalves
Samuel Gonçalves graduated in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. He worked at the Chilean studio ELEMENTAL as a team member of the Innovation Center UC project (Santiago, Chile) and several social housing projects, such as the incremental public housing complex in Constitución, Chile. In 2015 he founds his own studio – SUMMARY – focused on prefabricated architecture. He is currently developing the public project for 25 low-cost houses in Arouca, Portugal, in order to face the exponential rise of private housing market prices. His work has been exhibited in several venues, such as La Biennale di Venezia (2016), the Boston Society of Architects (2019) and the Bauhaus Centenary (2019).

*Proposal selected by open-call.

Thu. 17 June / Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa
Palácio Sinel de Cordes

Domestic Matters

Organisers
Anna Puigjaner & Moisés Puente

Participants
b+ & LaCol

full debate & info

The precarity upon which contemporary life relies, has boosted the different types of ownership, social relations and management systems. Domestic Matters is a one-day event which will put in conversation two architectural practices, LaCol and Brandlhuber+, with the aim of establishing an open debate about contemporary domestic realities, their conflicts and possible futures.

PARTICIPANTS

Lacol

It is a cooperative of architects that works in the neighborhood of Sants, in Barcelona. They work from architecture toward social transformation, using architecture as a tool to intervene critically in the environments that are closest to them. They root their activity in a horizontal system of labor, acting alongside society with justice and solidarity in mind.

b+
Brandlhuber+ is a collaborative practice founded in 2006 by Arno Brandlhuber in Berlin. The practice is devoted to the idea of collaboration with other practices, disciplines, and individuals. Their work includes architectural and research projects, exhibitions, publications, and political interventions. Resulting from reflections on the shifting parameters that guide and shape their work, between practice and theory, the office is currently in transition to become b+.

ORGANISERS

Anna PuigjanerShe is an architect, a founder member of the MAIO architecture studio in Barcelona and Associate Professor at Columbia University. Her research on the ‘Kitchenless City’ was awarded the Wheelwright Prize by Harvard University in 2016.

Moisés Puente
He is is an architect and editor. He was on the editorial committee of the Quaderns d’Architecture de Urbanisme magazine, worked with publisher Gustavo Gili as editor and a director of 2G magazine. He runs the Puente Editores publisher.

Sat. 18 Setembro / 14:00 / Walking tour
17:00 / debate / MIRA FORUM, Porto

Decolonising the City

Organisers
Ana Jara & Miguel Cardina

Participants
Desirée Desmarattes, Dori Nigro, Marta Lança & Paulo Moreira

full debate & info

Walking tour
Joining personal contemporaneous experiences, collective memories and relics of colonialism to its wider historical context can offer new insight and enable us to examine the root causes of individual prejudice and systems of oppression. We propose a performative walking tour as a form of activism that addresses the lack of attention, acknowledgement and revision of colonialist narratives and ideologies that circulate Portuguese society.

The ‘Decolonising the City’ debate aims to question the persistence of colonial structures and mentalities in the public sphere in Portugal. Starting from architecture's social and political place, the debate is intended to analyse how the form of cities continues to (re)produce colonial representations, modes of social and spatial segregation and hierarchies - both clear and subtle - which are still abuzz with dichotomies such as centre and periphery, metropolis and colonies, north and south. With this in mind, there is a need to observe the intersections between power, temporality, and territory. This requires questioning how the representations of our colonial past become part of our public space and how they bring up memorial disputes and political uses, against a backdrop in which the persistence of certain national mythologies and their commoditisation is significantly operative, whilst also being subject to an increasingly critical eye. This diachronic view of the city and the challenges of decolonising it arises at a time when it is essential to discuss racism, policy violence and inequality on a deeper level, as well as to consider issues of belonging, migration and diasporas, and which also points to a future in which the Right to the City is an emerging horizon for citizenship.

PARTICIPANTS
Desirée DesmarattesGraduated in Art Studies at University Duisburg-Essen with study exchange at Marmara University Istanbul. Currently completing a Masters in Art and Design for the Public Space at FBAUP. Lived and worked in contemporary art and photography galleries in Essen, Marseille & Istanbul. Research focuses on transnationalism, postcolonialism and identity in visual and contemporary art.

Dori Nigro
He presents himself as a performer, pedagogue and arts educator. Born in a rural working family and fishing labour in the Pernambuco state, in Brazil, its artistic course began with the participation in communal amateur theatre projects. He got access to his formal education thanks to public policies and racial quotas. Nowadays he develops a research about ‘Performance, Ancestry and Afrodiasporic Identity’, framed in his doctoral degree in Contemporary Art, from the Arts College of University of Coimbra.

Marta Lança
Lisbon (1976). Doctoral student in Artistic Studies, with a degree in Portuguese Studies, Compared Literature and Text Edition from FCSH-UNL. The research themes go from post-colonial debate, cultural programming, memory processes, speech platforms and African studies. She created the following publications V-ludo, Dá Fala, Jogos sem Fronteiras (co-ed) and, since 2010, she the editor of BUALA website. She writes for publications in Portugal, Angola and Brazil. She translated the books of Maxence Fermine, Jacques-Pierre Amettea, Asger Jorn and Achille Mbembe. In Luanda she taught in Agostinho Neto University and collaborated with the 1st Trienal de Luanda; in Maputo, she worked with the documentary festival Dockanema. Currently she coordinates the project “ReMapping Memories Lisboa-Hamburg, Lugares de Memória (Pós)colonias”, [RecMapping Memories Lisbon-Hamburg, Places of (Post)Colonial Memory] from Goethe Institut.

Paulo Moreira
Paulo Moreira has a degree from Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. Since 2010 he is a doctoral student at Sir Jogn Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University (where he concluded his master degree in 2009). He made an internship with Herzog & de Meuron in 2003/04 and then studied with Peter Zumthor in Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio in 2002/03. He received several scholarship and prizes, as such the Prémio Novos – Architectura in 2015 (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation); doctoral scholarship from FCT in 2010 (Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology); and Noel Hill Travel Award in 2009 (American Institute of Architects – UK Chapter).

ORGANISERS
Ana Jara Architect, scenographer and urban studies researcher. She is the co-founder of Artéria – Humanizing Architecture, where she coordinates curatorial and urban intervention projects. HAs a degree from the Faculty of Architecture of Universidade Técnica de Lisboa and a master in Arts, from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. She was an invited teacher at Umeå School of Architecture, in Sweden (2014-15). She also taught in a postgraduate program in Design Thinking at IADE (2017-18). She’s a doctoral student in Urban Studies from ISCTE-IUL and FSCH-UNL. Writes regularly on architecture, city and urban polices in publications as Caderno Vermelho and Le Monde Diplomatique.
Since 2018 she has been a councillor of the Lisbon City Hall.

Miguel Cardina Miguel Cardina is a researcher at Centre for Social Studies of University of Coimbra. He gained, in 2016, the Staritng Grand scholarship from the European Research Council as project coordinator for the research “CROME - Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence. The Colonial-Liberation Wars in Postcolonial Times” (2017-2023). He is author or co-author of several books, chapters and papers on colonialism, anti-colonialism and colonial war; political ideology history in the 1960 and 1970 decades; and dynamics of history and memory. He was President of the Scientific Board of CES (2017-2019) and coordination member of Humanities, Migrations and Peace Studies Research Group (2013-2016).

Sun. 19 September / 17:00 / MIRA FORUM, Porto

Struggle within Conflict

Organisers
Francisco Calheiros & Maria Trabulo

Participants
Ana Naomi de Sousa, José António Pinto & Marina Otero Verzier

full debate & info

Still from Estada Militar (Military Road), 2009. Image courtesy of Mónica de Miranda Studio

Cities are inevitably marked by confrontations, insurrections, resistance and other conflicting events over
time that influence them organically and their configuration. The hegemonic power is imprinted in its cartography and history, placing the city as the first arena of the conflict, easily mediatable and almost always inconsequential, obliterating the daily struggle of its inhabitants.
Furthermore, there is an intricacy to debating their struggle, as those who are most affected by the decisions made, rarely get to sit at the table. The alienation in attending the city and its inhabitants problems, the lack of discourse that goes beyond the aestheticization of the building and the almost exclusive dependence on private commissions mainly serving the dominant class, contributes to the perpetuation of forms of violence against the neediest communities, that end up oppressed and excluded. Struggle within conflict sheds light on the informality and marginality of the cities, questioning the architect’s role.

PARTICIPANTS

Ana Naomi de Sousa
Documentary director and independent journalist. She has directed Architecture of Violence, Angola - Birth of a Movement; Guerrilla Architect; Hacking Madrid and Ecuador's Hidden Treasure. Has collaborated with Forensic Architecture in the interactive documentary Saydnaya about a militar prison in Syria, which received a Peabody award in 2017. Writes about politics of space, post-colonial themes and culture for multiple platforms, including The Guardian, The Funambulist and Al Jazeera.

José António Pinto
José António Pinto has a bachelor's degree in social service and a master's degree in Sociology by FLUP, writes for both Público and Visão and is a hospital clown. Works for the Campanhã parish where he has developed several activities in context of exclusion, like theatre, photography and cinema, with the unprivileged communities. In 2013 the Portuguese Parliament honoured José António Pinto with a gold medal for the Human Rights award, in recognition of his work in Porto. Was a Tedex-Porto speaker and one of the 60 person that TIME-OUT considered to make Porto a better city.

Marina Otero Verzier
Architect and director of research at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. Part of the Curatorial team of the Shanghai Biennial (2021), she previously curated the Dutch Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, was the Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Trienalle, and director of Global Network Programming at Studio-X - Columbia University GSAPP. Otero is a co-editor of books such as After Belonging (2016), Unmanned: Architecture and Security Series (2016-2020), and Architecture of Appropriation: squating as spatial practice (2019). She is Head of the Masters in Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven. Marina holds an Architectural degree from ETSAMadrid. She Graduated as a Fulbright Scholar from the M.S. in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture at Columbia University GSAPP and completed the PhD at ETSAM.

ORGANISERS
Francisco Crisóstomo
Holds a master degree (2014) in architecture at the University of Porto and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, with the dissertation Delirious D.F. (Mexico City): Chaos narratives through urban praxis. Did an internship with Fernando Romero (FR-EE) and worked with the collective murmuro (2015-2017) and with the collective depA (2017-2018), before beginning his individual practice in 2019. Active member of MTA (Architecture Workers Movement) since its formation in 2019.

Maria TrabuloVisual artist and researcher, living between Porto and Berlin. Maria has developed a multidisciplinary artistic path, exhibiting her work in relevant museums and galleries in Portugal and abroad, and participating in several artistic residencies. Her work has been recognized and awarded by important institutions.
PhD student in Science and Technology of the Arts at Escola das Artes-UCP. Master in Art & Science from Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, and graduated in Fine Arts from FBAUP.She was co-founder and artistic director of the InSpiteOf project (2018-20), and the Expedição project (2013-15), both in Porto.

*Proposal selected by open-call.

Debates

No State Council

Caring Assemblies: Positions on a Space-to-Come

Previous Events

Debating Lisbon’s Future
Housing Strategy

Instant City

Lines of Violence

Public Housing – No Silver Bullet

Domestic Matters

Decolonising the City

Struggle within Conflict

in conflict

Open Call

Team

Debates

No State Council

Caring Assemblies: Positions on a Space-to-Come

Previous Events

Debating Lisbon’s Future Housing Strategy

Instant City

Lines of Violence

Public Housing – No Silver Bullet

Domestic Matters

Decolonising the City

Struggle within Conflict

in conflict

Open Call

Team

Debating Lisbon’s Future
Housing Strategy