Chilean/Portuguese duo curates conference programme 2020–22

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Felipe De Ferrari and Diana Menino’s proposal for the conference cycle was selected among 26 applications arriving from 11 different countries. The international jury members considered the very appealing proposal held the potential for deep reflection on some of the main and urgent issues of contemporary architecture. The 2020–2022 Conference Cycle—whose official name is «Common Field»—brings together the cycles of conferences jointly organised by the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and CCB – Garagem Sul (Critical Distance, since 2011, and Lectures from the Garage, since 2017). It intends to focus on themes that are highly relevant to society, which allows for the sharing of contemporary practices and seeks to anticipate answers to major current issues, gathering in Lisbon the globally most significant reflections, with a special emphasis on the European panorama.

The jury’s choice fell on a Chilean/Portuguese duo composed of architects Felipe De Ferrari and Diana Menino Ferreira. De Ferrari is Co-founder of 0300TV (2007), OnArchitecture (2012) and Plan Común (2012), has given lectures and participated in seminars all over the world, and was a teacher at PUC Architecture School between 2014 and 2018. Menino has worked on several architecture projects, has started an independent project that aims to recover a textile industry, is the Co-founder of Campo Arquitectura and has recently initiated a collaboration with Artworks as Art Coordinator for the Lisbon area.

The proposed programme caught the attention of the jury for its appropriateness and urgency, suggesting a profound reflection, which is understood in a broad sense and clearly multidisciplinary involvement. Its simple principles, though, escape from the obvious answers to this kind of calls for proposals. In the words of the jury «De Ferrari & Menino reveal a concern for the careful management of resources (…). Their focus on Europe and European lecturers is not only pragmatic but commendable, as professional knowledge often emerges in defined cultural regions, and expands in dialogues between them».

The duo’s proposal refuses to focus on individual authors «choosing to involve essentially collective practices, emphasizing the networks of knowledge currently making an impact on the continent, communicating to the public a current shift towards collective and common structures, and benefiting to the critical mass of each session». Curating a variety of voices from related fields, « this programme can generate new and specific knowledge with a relevant contribution to the discipline, on an international level».

There was further praise for the suggestion to extend the events beyond the spaces provided and the planned media, promoting local visits and a series of micro events with local students, enriching the conference programme and making an interesting approach in regard to the Lisbon audience. Also found particularly important was the commitment to promote a greater gender balance between the invited speakers.

The duo of curators provides us with a synopsis of the new conference cycle, according to their curatorial perspective: «Architecture must be understood as a strategic attitude regarding space and resources. Common Field aims to discuss architecture in its most literal meaning: a collective and strategic knowledge that is and could be applied by everyone, in any community, environment or culture, through a series of mechanisms, devices, structures and forms. To build up a Common Field requires to assess the idea of common sense, a critical concept in the present context of global neoliberalisation and political decay. Hence, we claim for a critical and optimistic attitude towards physical and cultural contexts, policies, briefs and clients, architecture can appropriate reality, in radical and unexpected ways from research to construction—making visible its potential and contradictions, developing projects that enable emancipatory ideas, thus building as a common field. We argue a radical architectural project is not only desirable but it is needed. Such project can be conceived by an accumulative process of constant appropriation, imitation, repetition, translation, and re-contextualisation with open-minded and generous thinking—with both pragmatism and humour—based on a careful review of material reality and social conditions. Common Field will explore the threads towards this collective construction».

The objective of the Open Call jointly launched by the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and Garagem Sul – Centro Cultural de Belém back in May 2019 was to gather proposals for the development of a series of conferences that kept the discourse of previous cycles and was relevant to the international cultural agenda, engaging authorships from different geographic contexts. The goal was for the curatorship to define the concept of the 3-year conference cycle—which will run from March 2020 to November or December 2022, and take place at CCB, in Lisbon—, thus determining the guest line-up and arranging, presenting and moderating each conference of the cycle. The call ended on 1 July and brought together applications from Asia, America (North and South) and Europe, which were as varied as their provenance.

The jury composed of José Mateus, Manuel Henriques, Madalena Reis, André Tavares and Irina Davidovici pointed out how positive it was to find so many different concepts, from such diverse latitudes, considering many of the proposals wordy of being taken under consideration for other programmes the Triennale and CCB – Garagem Sul might develop. As a final note, we must emphasize that the organizers were impressed by the quality and diversity of the many proposals received.