News

Next Saturday, December 7th, I will be presenting the lecture ‘Homage to Bernini’ or the Baroque Enigma in Álvaro Siza's Architecture as part of Siza Baroque III: Concrete, White, Gold, a colloquium held at the Soares dos Reis National Museum.

My lecture will offer a critical reading of Gilles Deleuze’s Le Pli (1988), extending the concept of the infinite Baroque line to the folds evident in Siza’s architectural works. The title draws inspiration from Louise Bourgeois’s 1967 sculpture Homage to Bernini (Bourgeois herself often described her work as Baroque).

Next Wednesday, December 3rd, at 7 p.m., I will be presenting Koolhaas Houselife (2008, 58′) and Butohouse (2019, 33′), both directed by Louise Lemoine & Ila Bêka, at the Pequeno Auditório of the Centro Cultural de Belém.

These screenings are part of the Cinema Cycle Living Architecture, dedicated to the cinematographic oeuvre of Bêka & Lemoine. The cycle is organised in collaboration with the Portuguese Cinemateca and is part of the exhibition Homo Urbanus. A Citymatographic Odyssey by the same filmmakers.

On March 6th, at 6:30 pm, at the Palácio Galveias Library in Lisbon, I am delighted to announce the launch of my latest book, Interferências: Arquitetura como Multiplicidade (Interferences: Architecture as Multiplicity), published by Circo de Ideias. The event will be graced by the presence of Architect Pedro Machado Costa, who authored the preface, and Philosopher Maria Filomena Molder, alongside the editor, Architect Pedro Baía.

Two new publications (available for download in Portuguese only) have been released. Both books are part of a comprehensive research project on the city and its relationship with various art practices, conducted within the framework of Philosophical studies at Ifilnova, the Center for Philosophical Studies at Nova University of Lisbon, to which I have contributed.

The script I wrote for an imagined guided tour of the exhibition EXIST/RESIST - Works by Didier Fiúza Faustino: 1995-2022, curated by Pelin Tan, is now available on maat extended. This exhibition was held at the maat - Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology in Lisbon from October 5th, 2022 to March 6th, 2023. The script is based on a Conversation in Movement between Didier Fiúza Faustino and myself, where we guided the public through a critical selection of different works.

The Portuguese Architects Association has recently launched the 19th edition of the Fernando Távora Award, which is open until August 7th. As a past winner of the 9th edition, I am honoured to be a part of this edition's jury alongside Ricardo Pais, Ana Neto Vieira, Maria José Távora, and Andrea Soutinho.

This Saturday, at 12 p.m., at Uma Lulik_ Gallery, in Lisbon, join Carolina Serrano and me for a guided tour around Carolina’s solo exhibition Teeth to the Bones for which I had the pleasure of writing the text.

“In her work, the artist Carolina Serrano has dedicated herself to thinking about the universal categories resulting from this stratification, which may be attributed to humans. She is particularly interested in the boundary between right and wrong, which meddles as much in arbitrary everyday decisions as in the highest purposes of humanity as it acts upon the World.”

This Friday, the 9th of December, at 5.30 p.m., at Rialto6, Tiago Baptista and I will be making a guided tour through Tiago Baptista’s exhibition The Tale, titled after Meredith Monk’s homonym song. This song has fascinated Tiago Baptista for a long time, giving birth to an entirely new body of work.

This Saturday, at 4.30 p.m., at MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, join Didier Fiúza Faustino and me for a “conversation in movement”. Departing from Didier Fiúza Faustino’s retrospective exhibition Exist/Resist - Works by Didier Fiúza Faustino 1995-2022 at this museum, we will take you on a journey to discuss the body as a guerrilla space.

The 7th Sophia International Conference will happen next Wednesday in person at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, and Thursday online through Zoom.

After a selection of the best papers and visual essays submitted to our Call, the results will be presented during the online conference, organised in two panels, discussing several issues such as landscapes of extraction, wastelands, desert landscapes as heritage, geological boundaries and political borders, arctic expeditions, etc.

It is with great pleasure that I am curating the next solo exhibition by Tiago Baptista under the title The Tale at Rialto 6, opening on the 16 of September, at 9.30 (p.m.).

Next Wednesday, June 8th, from 5 to 9 pm, it will open the collective exhibition Matter-Affect, at Galeria No.No, with works by Daniela Ângelo, Jong Oh, Keke Vilabelda, Nora Aurrekoetxea, and Pilar Mackenna, for which I had the pleasure to contribute with the curatorship. Feel free to join us!

This Friday, 3rd June, at 5pm, at Academia das Ciências, Daniel Moreira and Rita Castro Neves will be lauching their recentest book, entitled Arquivos de Bouça Fria (Bouça Fria’s Archives). The book presents their extensive artistic work, from photographs to drawings, paintings and engravings, made over two years around a very particular area in Peneda-Gerês (north of Portugal). The book also features three essays from Jorge Gaspar, Maria de Fátima Lambert and me. Join us!

Next Wednesday starts the International Conference “Thinking the City through Fragmentation and Reconfiguration: Aesthetic and Conceptual Challenges” that will last for three intensive days. As a member of its organisation, I will be moderating one of the panels and looking forward to attending the remaining panels and keynote talks. The event will be in person without streaming: join us!

On Monday, the 4th of April, at 6 p.m. at the Northern Portuguese Architects Association’s headquarters, I’ll participate in a debate about the Fernando Távora Award as one of its recipients, back to 2014, with other awarded architects (Armando Rabaça, Maria Neto, and Paulo Moreira).

Next Tuesday (15th March) at 6 pm in Garagem Sul - Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon) will open the exhibition Sound it - Rádio Antecâmara, curated by Alessia Allegri and Pedro Campos Costa. During the exhibition’s timeline, several authors will deliver live radio shows from the assembled radio studio at the heart of the exhibition. I’ll occupy it during the week from the 22nd until 27th March with my radio show Requested Books.

Next Saturday, I will be talking with Eduarda Neves and Maria Coutinho at the launch of Contemporânea #7 (editorial director: Celina Brás; invited editor: Eduarda Neves), dedicated to Photography! This print issue has Eduarda Neves as guest editor and I had the pleasure to interview Musa paradisiaca about the project An Animal with a backpack. The magazine has four different covers with a selection of photographs of the Cheesy Photographs series by João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva (2017).

In 2018, Glenstone Museum opened the Pavilions designed by Thomas Phifer. The book Glenstone: The Pavilions now published features a foreword by Emily Wei Rales; texts by me, Paul Goldberger, and Michelangelo Sabatino; photographs by Iwan Baan; a conversation between Thomas Phifer, Paul Goldberger, Adam Greenspan and the Rales; and drawings and archival elements produces during the building creative process by Thomas Phifer and Partners. The book is available for pre-order.

We are now accepting abstracts for the International Conference “Thinking the City trough Fragmentation and Reconfiguration: Aesthetic and Conceptual Challenges” within the FCT-Funded Research Project [PTDC/FER-FIL/32042/2017] “Fragmentation and Reconfiguration: Experiencing the City Between Art and Philosophy” to be held between 1st-3rd June 2022 at Nova University of Lisbon (Colégio Almada de Negreiros).

Sophia Journal is currently accepting submissions for the upcoming Volume 7 “Landscapes of Care: the emergency of landscapes of care in unstable territories,” addressing contemporary photography and visual practices that focus on how architecture understood in a wide sense can help to heal a broken planet.