The Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2019, now at its fifth edition, opens on 3 October. Since 2007, the event has undoubtedly grown, particularly after the 2016 edition – “The Form of Form” curated by André Tavares (1976) and Diogo Seixas Lopes (1972-2016) – with which it expanded, reaching the general public in addition to specialists in the field.

This year, architect, theorist and educator Éric Lapierre (1966) is leading the event as curator: the proposal won out over 48 proposals from 16 different countries. Lapierre is joined by the team with which he presented the proposal for the call, namely the course on Architecture & Experience at the Faculty of Architecture in Marne-la-Vallée, now Paris-Est: the philosopher Sébastien Marot, Ambra Fabi and Giovanni Piovene (PioveneFabi), Fosco Lucarelli and Mariabruna Fabrizi (Socks Studio and Microcities), Laurent Esmilaire and Tristan Chadney. The team has worked almost three years around the theme of “The Poetics of Reason”, which is linked to the disciplinary research of Architecture & Experience and which promises to be full-bodied and consistent.

The main exhibition, “Economy of Means” curated by the French architect, will be flanked by four other exhibitions, in five different venues: below you will find what we expect to see in these five events.
The program is enriched by a series of collateral events; among the awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award to Denise Scott Brown.

Curated by Éric Lapierre
MAAT – Central Tejo
The chief curator’s exhibition deals with the possibility of a rational architecture, realised through an economy of means and aware of the shrinking availability of the global resources (of all kinds). The focus of the exhibition is on the best responses of architects and designers, both historical and contemporary, who take into account this current global condition with results that produce beauty.

Curated by Sébastien Marot
CCB – Garagem Sul
The philosopher proposes a parallel between the discipline of architecture and that of agriculture. The premise of the exhibition is that the architectural discipline can learn from permaculture, a method of crop design that simulates the functioning of natural ecosystems, suggesting the possibility of conciliation between natural and artificial.

Curated by Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli
MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art
The exhibition deals with the relationship between imagination and rational thought in architecture, linked by the research of the duo of Italian architects. The sedimentation and use of the imaginary, both in its individual and collective dimension, are the territory that Fabrizi and Lucarelli investigate both through historical references, such as Lina Bo Bardi and Aldo van Eyck, and with contemporary examples as the French office Bruther.

Curated by Ambra Fabi e Giovanni Piovene
Culturgest
Ornament is the central theme of the exhibition of the Milanese duo PioveneFabi. The questioning form of the title probably deceives, in its seeming to foretell an intention that is more evocative than analytical. "What is Ornament?" is divided into six rooms that correspond to six sections, which cover the theme of ornament from its most constructive meaning to the dimension of an environmental phenomenon, arriving in its last section to read the very urban project as ornament. Here, too, the reading of the theme is guided by historical and contemporary examples and materials, from Alison and Peter Smithson to De Vylder Vinck Taillieu and Christ & Gantenbein.

The exhibition will be hinged in the middle of the exhibition by the projection of the restored film “Ornamento e Delitto” by Aldo Rossi, Gianni Braghieri and Franco Raggi. The restoration was supported by the Aldo Rossi Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna specially for the occasion, and will be screened in Lisbon as a world premiere.

Curated by Laurent Esmilaire e Tristan Chadney
Sinel de Cordes Palace
The exhibition is intended to be a reflection on the construction and how it can be in itself a form of beauty or, at least, a parameter shared and understandable to all, precisely because of its rationality. The exhibition traces a genealogy of projects, drawn from the history of architecture as well as from projects by students that have been shortlisted for the Universities Competition Award in this edition of the Lisbon Triennial.