At New York’s Center for Architecture, a new exhibition expands the image of Portuguese architecture beyond the widely known starchitect Álvaro Siza. Generation Proxima: Emerging Environmental Practices in Portuguese Architecture opened this week at the Center for Architecture in conjunction with Archtober. It’s curated by Pedro Gadanho, architect, author, curator, former MoMA curator, and Loeb Fellow at Harvard University. It builds on a new book by Gadanho Climax Change! How Architecture Must Transform in the Age of Ecological Emergency.
The exhibition on display through March 23 highlights seven emerging Portuguese practices that have demonstrated environmental consciousness in their work.
The firms include the Lisbon-based studio ARTÉRIA, Colectivo Warehouse, Gorvell, Nuno Pimenta, Oficina Pedrez, OODA, and Madeira-based studio Ponto Atelier. Graphic designers from Atlantic New York, in collaboration with FUZE, created Generation Proxima’s graphic identity. Amorim created a cork installation for displaying models.
“Generation Proxima spotlights the imperative shift towards environmental consciousness in architectural practice, centered on an emerging cohort of Portuguese architects,” said Jesse Lazar, the recently named executive director of AIANY and the Center for Architecture. “Architects must usher in a paradigm shift to combat the ecological crisis, not perpetuate it. The Center for Architecture is excited present an exhibition that advocates for context-sensitive craftsmanship and innovative design.”
“I’m incredibly excited that one of the very few exhibition venues dedicated to contemporary architecture in NYC is looking at the urgency with which we must change our daily practices in face of the ongoing ecological emergency,” Gadanho said in the press release. “Generation Proxima focuses on the potential of an ‘environmental turn’ in the context of world-recognized Portuguese architecture, but it should be seen essentially as presenting global examples of how any existing, site-specific ‘ways of doing’ architecture can be enhanced towards goals of decarbonization, ecological balance, increased biodiversity, and lower resource use.”
For more information about Generation Proxima, visit Center for Architecture’s website.
