Lisbon Ground

Lisbon Ground The Portuguese Representation at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Veneza 
Veneza, IT . 2012

The Portuguese Directorate-General for the Arts (DGArtes) presents Lisbon Ground, the exhibition that will represent Portugal at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. It is a project conceived and developed by the architect Inês Lobo as designated curator, responding to the theme topic “Common Ground” put forward by the di- rector of this Venice Biennale, David Chipperfield.

The city of Lisbon is the main focus of the planned exhibition, from the standpoint of Lisbon as a “common territory, just one possible meaning of the theme topic ‘CommonGround’
“a common area of knowledge, territory shared by a group of thinkers, which includes people from architecture, cinema, photography, literature...”,
In Lisbon Ground the city is presented by means of three themes: Lisbon Downtown, Lisbon River and Lisbon Connec- tions.

These three themes arose after reflection and discussion about a select group of specific works and projects sharing a territory and common themes – Lisbon. Participants in the process included well-known architects such as Álvaro Siza Vieira, Bárbara Rangel, Eduardo Souto Moura, Francisco Ma- teus, Gonçalo Byrne, Joana Vilhena, João Carrilho da Graça, João Favila Menezes, João Gomes da Silva, João Nunes, João Pedro Falcão de Campos, João Simões, José Adrião, Manuel Graça Dias, Manuel Mateus, Manuel Salgado, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Pedro Domingos, Ricardo Bak Gordon, Ricardo Car- valho, Rui Furtado and Rui Mendes.

The works in question reflect 24 years of intervention in the city, the time period (1988-2012) on which those reflections are focused, and serve as raw material for the exhibition’s var- ious components:

Video, by Catarina Mourão, recordings of conversations from three round-tables that consider the city vis-à-vis the pro- posed themes, and drawings made by the speakers during those discussions;
Map of Lisbon indicating “between spaces”, a synthesis reg- ister of the city in 2012;

Photographs, by Duarte Belo, which represent and synthesise the inherent complexity of the city’s design while at the same time affirming Lisbon as a metropolis with multiple meanings in the context of European urban culture;

Testimony about the city through selected texts by Antonio Tabucchi.



Photographer: Leonardo Finotti