Visionaries exhibition
- Year: 2022
- Location: Culturgest Culture Centre, Lisbon
- Client: Lisbon Architecture Triennale Terra
- Participants: Andres Jaques, MVRDV, Anupama Kundoo, Rohan Chovan, ORG Permanent Modernity, Roger Anger, Bruno Munari, Hans van der Laan, Aristid Antonas, SVESMI, Selgascano, bplus.xyz, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Obscura, Galina Balashova, Tokyo Toilet, Studio Ensemble, Ultimate Compost Club, Carolin Voet, Tomoaki Uno
An exhibition curated by Anastasia Smirnova-Berlin with the SVESMI team explored systemic thinking in architecture and various types of visionary authorship.
The exhibition was composed of three sections: Monovisions, Cathedral Thinking and Futurology of the Intimate. Each section consisted of thematic rooms, each with its own story.
Monovisions
A flying city, a transparent dome over a metropolis, and a bridge between continents spring to mind whenever we think about visionary projects. Architects and designers behind these famous concepts of the last century were avant-garde minds who
took on the future by sheer energy of their individual genius and almost paranoid perseverance.
Is this type of “mono” authorship still relevant in the world on its way to singularity and climate disaster? In this section we rediscover architectural system thinkers who managed to realise their influential visions, but were unfairly forgotten in recent years.
With the help of contemporary architects and researchers of visionary heritage, we investigate how past models survived the trials of time and from what kind of updates they can benefit today.
Cathedral Thinking
In mediaeval times the construction of prominent buildings – first of all cathedrals – was usually initiated by large collectives of people who understood that they would not live long enough to see their work finalised. To remain productive within open-ended timelines and effectively participate in the projects that spanned generations, architects, artisans, and builders adopted a particular mindset – simultaneously very ambitious and very humble.
Although the term cathedral thinking is not officially included into any theoretical glossary, it captures the very spirit of those endeavours driven by epic common goals. It implies symphonic authorship and laboratory modus operandi.
Today, with the advent of inter-scalar design and acceleration of the new planetary agenda cathedral thinking is – or should be – back again into architectural praxis. Large-scale initiatives with distant horizons and an ever-growing number of contributors are in focus of this section.
Futurology of the Intimate
In this section we discuss how visions for the next everyday could emerge in response to slight changes in human behaviour and social norms.
By developing new habits – taking care of our hygiene and nutrition, sleeping, exercising differently – we challenge designers to propose alternative habitats or reimagine our homes all together. These rather small-scale designs seem to appear almost naturally, growing out of routine necessities, addressing the most intimate spaces, and yet bringing about fundamental transformations.
Photo: Nuno Cera, Sara Constanza
Visionaries Lisbon Triennale