FERTILE FUTURES

Pavillon of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia’23

curatorship by architect Andreia Garcia
assistant curators Ana Neiva and Diogo Aguiar

20.05.23

^{PONTOATELIER is part of the team representing Portugal for the Pavillon of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia’23}^{FERTILE FUTURES will advocate, between Portugal and Venice, the pertinence of Architecture's contribution to the redesign of a decarbonized, decolonized and collaborative future, responding directly to Lesley Lokko's call, starting from a learning process that gathers the African context, like others that have long witnessed extreme climatic conditions.
Focusing on seven distinct hydro-geographies deeply affected by anthropocentric action, FERTILE FUTURES engages young architects, in collaboration with specialists from other fields of knowledge, to propose models for a more sustainable, healthy and equitable tomorrow, in non-hierarchical cooperation between disciplines, generations and species.

For the Madeira Island, the proposal will be designed by PontoAtelier, in collaboration with Ana Salgueiro, support from the Governo Regional da Madeira and partnership with porta33.}

_EXHIBITION

OS NOVOS NOVOS / THE YOUNG NEW

CCB Garagem Sul

^{15.03.22 - 04.09.22}

^{“To build on the Atlantic islands implies a strong confrontation with nature. Not that this confrontation doesn’t happen in other places, but the geology of the Azores and the vegetation of Madeira bring that relation to the forefront. In this project for a pavilion of houses in the Jasmineiro, Ponto Atelier propose a very simple structure: the framework of a building that can accommodate different modes of inhabitation. A house is not bedrooms and living rooms, but the space in which we organise our lives. For that reason, fixed infrastructures (entrances, bathrooms, kitchen, etc.) here allow as many possible internal organisations as the imagination and needs of inhabitants require. The floors open themselves frankly to the outside and, at the perimeter of the small plot, it is the vegetation that builds the architecture of the place. The island’s exuberant species define a biological curtain that inverts the conventional priority of the architect: vegetation replaces the wall.

In the Azores, a small pavilion on a disused golf course gave form, temporarily, to a shelter. The work stripped off the exogenous lawn to reveal the geological substrate of the site, putting in its place a group of stones – simultaneously scenographic and revealing the volcanic dimension of the site. In these projects, an attention to volcanic geology and botanical qualities highlights that the focus of architecture is not necessarily what is built, but what it is possible to reveal and reconstitute from the way in which we build.”}
_{curatorship André Tavares}