Landscape as Architecture is an exhibition based on the collaborations between the architects Paulo David (b. Funchal, 1959) and João Gomes da Silva (b. Lisbon, 1962) and seeks to explore the different ways in which the landscape is developed as a place that is constructed by architecture. The spontaneous place, created by time and by unforeseeable earthly forces, is contrasted with another kind of place originating in human ingenuity and man’s capacity to make landscapes, manufacture time and give rise to the new. Through a significant group of architectural gestures, this exhibition explores the way in which the landscape becomes the setting for the human confrontation with nature (the place of our biography) and how it expresses the human need to order the world and, simultaneously, the desire to build the future (the human condition of giving birth).
This exhibition is developed over two stages: on the one hand, it proposes for the first time, the presentation of and reflection on the work of two architects who are fundamental for understanding Portuguese architectural culture. It is not a question of presenting their works exhaustively and chronologically, but instead, based on the singularity and pertinence (material, formal, reflexive and procedural) of some of their projects, to characterise the lines of force and thought generated by those architectural practices. On the other hand, it is also intended that this exhibition should become a platform for debate and reflection on such important concepts as landscape, construction, history, biography and desire in their relationship with the different ways of exercising contemporary architecture.