Architecture contest. The process can be as important as the work – iOnline

As a laboratory it were, where scientific methodology makes the praise of trial and error, the story of a country is built also through trial and error processes. Therefore, in the field of architecture, it is not only the final work, constructed, materialized, that is important, but also the processes that led to this outcome. In this sense, some process will be more challenging and enlightening than the competition, according to Michel Toussaint “a particular form of choices executors ideas and proposals or projective for a site for a building or an alternative search, where multiple dimensions theory and practice can be discussed throughout the contribution of competitors under fire from a jury, sponsorship of a promoter and communication to the outside. “

 
 

It is the importance of this order form that is highlighted in the exhibition “Architecture in Contest: Critical Trail Portuguese modernity”, open since yesterday and until the 29th of May in the South Garage – CCB. “The competitions are not only the possibility of large amount of construction work, but also have a significant contribution in building our cities and accompany the changes typical of the country. Large architectural issues are also key issues of society, “he began by explaining the curator Luis Santiago Baptista, in a presentation where he also underlined the dual dimension -” historical and documentary “- this shows

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Just the importance of the process, such trial and error, here not only show the projects that anointed winners of competitions. It is in this show, contests that do not even come to be materialized, as the Sagres Monument and other competition in which, with a winner chosen, were never revealed and analyzed the other competitors. “Here we have contests that failed, projects that were not chosen, but that raised fundamental issues of internal debate among architects, but also external debate with society at large. This show also offers the possibility to show the proposals that were forgotten because they were not chosen. “

 
 

Furthermore, according to the curator of this show, which also aims to celebrate twenty years of the Southern Regional Section procurement service of the Order of Architects, this look at the past is fundamental in building the look of the future: “This was a unique opportunity to present an overview on the subject of competition and realize, at a time when they are released so few, that the defense of competition as a way to order is key. And for that historical research is fundamental.

 
 

You need to know what were the contests throughout history in order to understand what may be today and what will be tomorrow. ” And the controversial ideas often associated with the tender procedure are to Luis Santiago Baptista, fundamental. “I do not care to hide the controversy, which is incidentally one of the qualities of the tender process.” Be the controversy between architects, as in the tender for the expansion of the National Assembly, where there were two winners, having finished project to be created by a third workshop; or discussion among the population, as was the contest behind the creation of the Belém Cultural Centre, which now serves as home to this show.

 
 

This story of national architecture is presented through a wooden structures tangle, a kind of scaffolding, which on the one hand create labyrinthine paths, on the other open paths intertwine in an exhibition space allocated by tender to the collective Forstudio . And why these paths that discovers a double reading of competitions, synchronic and diachronic, because the competition does not end at the time of actual choice, but shall subsist throughout the process leading to the realization of a project.

 
 

Analyzed separately – even without watertight borders – the 45 projects presented here are shown over ten thematic groups (Representation, Institution, Public Space, Culture, Heritage, Landscape, Leisure, Infrastructure, Education and Occupation) through content resulting from a survey of more than a year and the models of collection, designs, drawings, photographs, specifications and even press clippings that reveal “the dimension of research behind this exhibition.”

 
 

These 45 projects displayed fall into a chronology that begins in 1883 and ends at the moment, and which contains 450 selected high tenders out in Portugal. Since the contest for the Parliamentary Cortes, 1883; the first contest analyzed in detail in this show – the National Liceu de Almeida Fialho, Beja, Silva won by the architect Cristino in 1930; the latest project analyzed here and that is the requalification and reordering the beach and seafront of Figueira da Foz and Buarcos, won by Ricardo Vieira de Melo. In between, the story of a country, their identity, their representation, told here by symbols such as CCB, the House of Music, the Metro do Porto, oMuseu Coa, the Assembly of the Republic, Expo 98 and Gare do Oriente, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Machado de Castro Museum, the embassy of Portugal in Brasilia, the new headquarters of EDP or to the EstádioNacional if sui generis that is known only that effectively have been a contest without the but knowing the exact winner and who signed the bill.