Homeland

2024 marks a decade of Homeland, Portugal's official representation at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. In response to Rem Koolhaas' theme “Fundamentals - Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014”, Homeland proposed a critical reflection on housing, the field of excellence for architectural experimentation and a determining and primary element of urban and territorial construction, a social and cultural reflection of those who inhabit it.

Led by six groups, it focused on six types: temporary, informal, single-family, collective, rural and rehabilitation. Each typology was centred on one of the following cities: Porto, Matosinhos, Loures, Lisbon, Setúbal and Évora.

As an intervention piece, ‘the newspaper is the Pavilion of Portugal and aims to have an influence on the current Portuguese situation, to start a debate, to provoke some kind of response and to show possible ways forward, using examples from the past and talking about the future. It all takes place in a specific place, with specific people, in a specific context, rather than nowhere. Yet we look for this utopia in these places. We constantly forget that what we sometimes call Utopia is probably the only form of modernity. Without a sense of the future, there is no modernity’, said the curator Pedro Campos Costa.

The debate takes place on November 8, 2024 at 6.30pm.

Commissioned by the Directorate-General for the Arts, Homeland —News from Portugal has opened up a space to debate and question the housing crisis - which has worsened after so many years.

Learn more about this Portuguese Pavilion here.