The official Portuguese representation at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia 2023 — presents Fertile Futures.
Fertile Futures is a project which, curated by Andreia Garcia and assistant curated by Ana Neiva and Diogo Aguiar, problematises the water resources of seven Portuguese hydrogeographies, in order to think about a fertile, sustainable and equitable future. Commissioned by the Directorate-General for the Arts, the Fertile Futures exhibition will be presented between 20 May and 26 November 2023, at Palazzo Franchetti, in Venice.
The exhibition commissions young architects, in collaboration with experts from other fields of knowledge, to present propositional models for a more sustainable future, in non-hierarchical cooperation between disciplines, generations and species.
The seven cases under study exemplify the anthropocentric action on water resources, natural and finite with impacts in the Tâmega basin; in the International Douro; in the Middle Tagus; in the Albufeira do Alqueva; in the Mira River; in the Sete Cidades Lagoon; and in the Madeiran streams. The production of unpublished contents, from the strategic complementarity between practice, theory and teaching in architecture, defines the tripartite approach to experimentation and common reflection that focuses on the reality of the Portuguese territory.
Fertile Futures involves new generations in developing solutions for reservoirs of the future and defends, between Portugal and Venice, the relevance of Architecture's contribution in redesigning a decarbonized and collaborative tomorrow, thus contributing to a discussion that is common and global.
The exhibition comes in direct response to the call by Lesley Lokko, curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2023, which has the title and theme "The Laboratory of the Future".