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The Portuguese Pavilion in 2018

At the first meeting of participating countries, in october 2017, President of La Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta, praised the power of architecture as an instrument for social development and distribution of resources and appealed to the curators to invest in its worth for wider audiences. Portugal did not have yet a project because, for the first time in 15 years, the official representation was going to be selected by a contest. We invited seven pairs of architects to submit applications and a jury of five specialists in order to decide on our country’s voice in one of the largest international gatherings about the state of the art and its political bearings. When Public Without Rhetoric was selected, the negotiations about the headquarters of the Portuguese pavilion in 2018 were still going on. We chose this new location because the residency at Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, under the prestige of Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi and by the attractiveness of the Grand Canal, promised a good visibility and intersection of this project with the professionals and tourists that visit la Biennale Architettura 2018. The curators Nuno Brandão Costa and Sérgio Mah were committed to a generous representation. They gathered twelve projects of both renowned and emergent architects, and called four artists to document these outstanding works. We applaud the unprejudiced and daring plan they designed to install this excellent collection of the contemporary Portuguese Public Work in the typical private Venetian building that hosts them. Portugal’s participation at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia clearly joins the Freespace framework launched by Yvonne Farrell e Shelley McNamara: it promotes the evidence that State investment in collective, accessible and quality spaces is closely related to the raise of democratic, educated and inclusive societies.

Paula Varanda
General Director
Directorate-General for the Arts