PTEN
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In partnership: Burel Factory
Collaboration: Norsk Folkemuseum, minner.no, Norsk Revmatikerforbund Østfold, Bekhterev Norge
Support: Norwegian Arts Council, OCA - Office for Contemporary Art Norway
The exhibition that revisits Future Architecture Platform’s architecture collections is presented in the Palace, resulting from the 2021 open call Landscapes of Care, where the Lisbon Architecture Triennale selected two emerging artists.
Based on the idea presented by Anna Ulrikke Andersen and her selection and collection of exhibition objects in different formats, L’Atelier Senzu created the exhibition design for Chronic Conditions: Body and Building.
As we live longer, more people will live with chronic illnesses. Told from a personal narrative of chronic rheumatic illness, the curator of this exhibition asks: how do our bodies respond to buildings?
This exhibition uses the patient perspective captured in recent photographs and original films to revisit a selection of drawings and photographs from leading European collections, part of the Future Architecture Platform. Starting from the chronically ill body, we focus on fluids, joinery and openings, both in bodies and buildings, explored by architects and artists from 1822 to 1983.
A complete A to Z guide into this thematic is not possible. The exhibition highlights that the blueprint we have today is incomplete and should be developed further. Instead, we move from A to X: A for Architecture, to X, the unknown future, showing the way chronic illness affect our experience of landscapes, buildings and infrastructures. How can we configure a new alphabet to help us with the new tomorrow?
This is the central question in this virtual commented tour and talk to discuss the issues raised by the exhibition from different perspectives: that of scholars, artists, activists, architects, and patients themselves. They examine what role the disabled body plays in architecture today, and how existing structures could be challenged through design, poetry, curatorial practice, and personal narratives.
What chronic conditions should be brought to light in the architectural discourse? Since the 1970s, disability activists and scholars have investigated how people with disabilities are the object of disadvantage and discrimination in different areas of society. Their efforts have led to important legislation and principles, visible in the adoption of universal design in architecture. Yet, scholars such as Jos Boys are still critical of the way architecture today treats the disabled body as an afterthought in design. She argues that we should instead start the architectural process with the disabled body and the strategies these bodies use to live in a world that is not built for them. This focus would benefit not only disabled people, but everyone. Please find bios below.
See this visitalk with a commented tour and talk with guests.
Designed by L’Atelier Senzu, the scenography focuses on the use of textile material combined with the upcycling of exhibition elements to create an intimate atmosphere. In partnership with Burel Factory, a set of panels was designed in burel, a Portuguese handcrafted fabric made from Serra da Estrela sheep’s wool, which transforms the Palace’s exhibition rooms and takes advantage of this textile’s unique acoustic and thermal properties. With the reuse of material from previous exhibitions, L'Atelier Senzu challenges our perception of accessibility through some proposals that dare the body to adapt to different positions of the shown elements.
How do houses breathe? How do they keep standing? Are they cold? Why do they creak? Are they similar to your body? And how does your body relate to houses? Do you fit in every door? Can you go down the stairs without using vision? How can you peek through a window you can't reach? Can you memorise a route through its scents?
The Education Service presents a challenge-activity for the exhibition that questions how bodies respond to buildings from the perspective of chronically ill patients.vBy answering these questions, children's attention is turned to the relationship between the built environment and the well-being of bodies, by putting them in the shoes of those with needs that are different from their own. This will produce a critical reflection on the adequacy of spaces, and also suggest the creation of alternatives for full and accessible enjoyment of the space where we all live. In parallel, human health is related to the health of buildings, raising awareness for the need to take care of them as well.
Workshop-visit for Schools, 1st and 2nd cycle (ages 6-12)
Tuesday to Friday, by appointment
Duration: 90 minutes
Price: €1.50/child
To enroll: actividades@trienaldelisboa.com
Anna Ulrikke Andersen is a Norwegian architectural historian and filmmaker, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. She holds a PhD in architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture. In 2018-19 she was a Fellow at Harvard Film Study Center, where she began exploring filmmaking, sculpture, and essay writing as methods to investigate architecture experienced by people living with chronic illness. In 2021 she was the recipient of the prestigious Work Grant for Young Artists from the Norwegian Arts Council. Her first book, Christian Norberg-Schulz: An Architectural History through the Essay Film, will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2022.
L’Atelier Senzu is a Paris-based architectural firm founded in 2015 by Wandrille Marchais and David Dottelonde. The studio explores different areas of creation to imagine unique responses to climate and societal challenges. The office won the international competition for the transformation of the Chamber of Notaries, located Place du Châtelet in Paris, and recently completed the new Galerie Perrotin in the same city. They are also currently developing the first structural rammed earth building in the French capital.
In 2021, L’Atelier Senzu won the prize “Albums des Jeunes Architects et Paysagistes (AJAP)”, a biennial prize from the Ministry of Culture. They were also granted from the “Academy of Fine Arts” which annually awards five prizes each to young artists in the disciplines of painting, sculpture, architecture, engraving and musical composition.
Abi Palmer is an award-winning writer, artist and filmmaker. Her work often uses multisensory interaction and play to explore themes of disability, access intimacy and queer culture. Her debut book Sanatorium (Penned in the Margins, 2020) is a fragmented memoir, jumping between luxury thermal pool and blue inflatable bathtub. It was shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize. Her art installation Crip Casino has been exhibited at Tate Modern, Somerset House, Wellcome Collection (all in London) and Collective (Edinburgh). Her work is featured in the exhibition Chronic Conditions: Body and Building.
Jos Boys is an architect but also a researcher, consultant, educator, journalist, author, and photographer. Jos has long been involved in design activism for inclusion, namely as founding member of the Matrix feminist architecture practice, and of the Taking Place feminist art and architecture group. She also has considerable experience as an academic developer and instructional designer. She is course director for the MSc Learning Environments at the Bartlett UCL, with a particular interest in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. She co-founded with disabled artist Zoe Partington the Dis/Ordinary Architecture Project, a collaborative platform that develops initiatives bringing together the creativity of disabled artists with architectural students, educators and practitioners.