The workshop will focus upon one of the lesser-known historic treasures in Lisbon: the roman Baixa Lisboa catacombs (S. I b.C.), unknown until the XVIIIth Century and rarely visited. These catacombs remain a latent trace ready to be unveiled, critically considered in cultural, urban and touristic terms. The workshop will deal with these possibilities and will offer creative interpretations of the complex overlapping of this ruin and Lisbon’s urban structure.
WORKSHOP + CONGRESS
The traditional format of the “workshop” as an intense and short-duration working experience for students is the core around which the SYMMETRIES initiatives revolve. A “workshop” produces interesting results in a short space of time, catalyzing ideas that can be developed by students in conjunction with teachers. The format also allows for streamline exchanges between schools and contacts between teachers and students given that the duration of the workshops (one or two weeks), easily finds a place in the course calendar. The scale of a workshop permits working simultaneously on the organization of several such meetings, each one dealing with a theme and a city. As a continuation and conclusion of every workshop held, SYMMETRIES organizes a Micro-Congress lasting two days, involving the teachers from the workshop and incorporating external guests. This allows for a critical reflection on what has occurred, exchanging ideas and giving shape to propositive conclusions.
Congress and Workshop as a complementary pair of opposites (students vs. architects; action vs. reflection or speed vs. pause), provide a comprehensive framework in a short time span, an intensified instrument for analyzing reality.
