BUREAU's proposal draws on Philippe Duboy's publication, "Carlo Scarpa, L'Art d'Exposer," which argued that the Italian architect's true activity for most of his life was the design of exhibitions. Far from being considered a merely recreational activity, the staging of exhibitions at that time represented a close political commitment to the complex cultural dynamics of Italy.
A similar situation seems to be occurring in the case of Lilly Reich, an emblematic figure in the art world who has practically disappeared from most architecture books, obscured by the figure of a great "master."
The proposal presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Architecture Centre in Lisbon offers a contemporary, serious yet relaxed way of looking at what is supposed to be a cultural institution. The exhibition is conceived as a small gathering of friends: some large and imposing, others modest and more intimate.
Fragments from Serralves in Porto, John Soane in London, the Prado Museum in Madrid, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence illustrate stories experienced by millions. Displaced from their comfort zones, they become less institutional, less rigid, demonstrating through their "organs" their informality and their behind-the-scenes reality.
For its installation, a series of elements that had appeared throughout the history of the architecture center were removed. To a large extent, the entire construction has used materials from past exhibitions, recreating cultural moments and recovering existing elements from the history of the space.
Exhibitions constitute a public moment where content is displayed and shared, where people meet, debate, and interact, where visitors continually come and go in search of stimuli. While there is no absolute truth about the evolution of exhibition spaces, "Garage Encounters" proposes to revitalize the highly standardized models that characterize current exhibition spaces.
Curated by Mariana Pestana, the exhibition that inaugurated this space, Interspecies, is far from neutral: the show opens the world of architecture to approaches and attitudes that are necessary to go beyond the human.
