Sara Battesti, director of communication, told us: "The Triennial extends beyond these two months, extending its activities with cycles of conferences, activities and events continuously between each of its editions, trying to maintain a continuous link with the public."
As I have already pointed out, the exhibitions and books have been the best proof of their vitality and also their best and greatest contribution. The Triennial has avoided the realization of catalogs, which once the events have passed lose much of their interest, and has opted for the realization of books related to the exhibitions, that transcend the exhibitions, books that contribute knowledge to the architecture and that have a much longer life, once the events of these two months are over.
José Mateus, Chairman of Lisbon Triennale, told us at an interval between conferences: “We want to do more than a festival of architects, a meeting on architecture, our goal is architecture and if we are able to make a small contribution to architecture , all this is worth it… The books are a reflection of those intentions, with them we want to send a wider message to society”.
The books are an interesting complement, one more layer in the dissemination of the topics discussed, an extension of the ideas raised in the exhibitions. Exhibitions such as “Agriculture and Architecture: Taking the Country’s Side” have all the interest when they are complemented by the discourse raised with the other four exhibitions.
All the exhibitions have had a brilliant scenographic design, a montage that is also a way to convey a message about architecture. Some of them are the result of interesting collaborations and works developed over three years with European architecture schools.
They are an enormous work, sometimes encyclopedic, and several of them with an exhaustive treatment of the images. In some cases, a bit excessive, almost tending to show a horror vacui. An accumulation of images such that in some exhibition they have put binoculars to be able to see them given the distance they were from the viewer, as is the case of Economy of Means that can still be visited until January 13, 2020.
The power, the value, or simply the colonization of the images, in a clearly Instagramer world, has also been an interesting debate, on how there are different ways to approach this saturation of the image that on the other hand is a basic instrument and fundamental in the metalinguistic language of architecture and whose different visions, sometimes with less intensity, have been presented in intelligent and spectacular scenarios, as in the Inner Space exhibition, which can be visited until January 5, 2020.
Perhaps the most important and especially noteworthy aspect is that the speeches are accessible to a non-specialized public. The exhibits are a great example of how the same image can be interpreted by different architects through different relationships, and in general it shows how the visitor can approach them in an open way, to draw their own conclusions.
It is a Triennial that consolidates its objectives, moves away from the star-system festivals, without losing its commitment to Architecture, trying to get closer to a wider audience, and that has been much, much more, than this article counts.
