Commissioner/Curator: Inês Lobo
Assistants to the Commissioner: João Rosário and João Vaz

Lisbon Ground is the exhibition that will represent Portugal at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

It is a project conceived and developed by the architect Inês Lobo as designated curator by the Portuguese Directorate-General for the Arts (DGArtes), which is a response to the theme topic “Common Ground” put forward by the director of this the 13th international Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, David Chipperfield.

Lisbon is the main focus of the planned exhibition, from the standpoint of this city as a “common territory, just one possible meaning of the theme topic ‘Common Ground,’” “a common area of knowledge, territory shared by a group of thinkers, which includes people from architecture, cinema, photography, literature…” in the words of Inês Lobo.

In Lisbon Ground the city is presented by means of three themes: Lisbon Downtown, Lisbon River, and Lisbon Connections.

These three themes arose after reflection and discussion about a group of specific works and projects sharing a territory and common theme—Lisbon. Participants in the process included well-known architects such as Álvaro Siza Vieira, Bárbara Rangel, Eduardo Souto Moura, Francisco Mateus, Gonçalo Byrne, Joana Vilhena, João Carrilho da Graça, João Favila Menezes, João Gomes da Silva, João Nunes, João Pedro Falcão de Campos, João Simões, José Adrião, Manuel Graça Dias, Manuel Mateus, Manuel Salgado, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Pedro Domingos, Ricardo Bak Gordon, Ricardo Carvalho, Rui Furtado and Rui Mendes.

The works in question reveal 24 years of intervention in the city, the time period (1988–2012) on which those reflections are focused, and serve as raw material for the exhibition’s various components:

Video by Catarina Mourão, recordings of conversations from three round-tables that consider the city vis-à-vis the proposed themes, and drawings made by the speakers during those discussions;
Map of Lisbon, indicating “between spaces,” a synthesis register of the city in 2012;
Photographs by Duarte Belo, which represents and synthesises the inherent complexity of the city’s design while at the same time affirming Lisbon as a metropolis with multiple meanings in the context of European urban culture;
Testimony about the city through selected texts by Antonio Tabucchi.

The curator Inês Lobo asserts that “if we think of cities as complex and nowadays dysfunctional systems, albeit still one of mankind’s greatest inventions, then they should be returned to their inventor. Mobility/access, public space, private space, programmes, closeness and comfort must be considered to get those systems working again. This exercise implies recognition/understanding of the city, the invention of a city-dwelling mode pertinent to these times.”

With the precise aim of promoting a future perspective, the Lisbon Ground exhibition also includes the holding of an international public competition to design a project for the Campo das Cebolas/Doca da Marinha area of the waterfront in Lisbon’s Baixa Pombalina, organised in partnership with the Lisbon Municipal Council.

The Portuguese representation will be on show in the Fondaco Marcello building located on the Canal Grande between the Rialto and Accademia bridges. The space has an entrance on the canal for those arriving by boat as well as a street access for pedestrians.