At Play

At Play is an exhibition delving into play and the imagination, built experiments, and mythological narratives. The exhibition is essentially centered on the idea of “creating worlds.” It attempts to bring together two characters: the architect and the child. Children’s games have always been a breeding ground for the invention of “worlds.” Likewise, architects also imagine new “worlds.” These worlds and the mechanisms of invention they rely upon constitute the core of the exhibition, which touches on themes as varied as childhood and education, urban planning, public space, history, architecture, art, and creativity—in order to trace the history of imaginary as well as imagined “worlds”. Each one of us is a playful architect. From the solitary hut to the cosmopolitan ark, we build worlds we inhabit or co-inhabit.

After having been presented in Brussels before the pandemic, the Lisbon iteration of the exhibition At Play challenges the visitor through novel perspectives. The playful display enacts dialogues between different geographies and times, emphasising, through perception, the urgency to create better “Worlds.” Local experiments entangle with archival material to transform architects’ technical tools into enticing objects.

Team
The Lisbon iteration of At Play is organized by Garagem Sul / Centro Cultural de Belém in collaboration with CIVA, Brussels, and was curated by David Malaud, and co-curated by André Tavares, Ivo Poças Martins, Nikolaus Hirsch, and Cédric Libert.

Garagem Sul’s exhibition At Play benefited from the collaboration of several architects, and includes materials from the collections of CIVA, Drawing Matter, and Fundação Marques da Silva.

The exhibition At Play is accompanied by a public program including site and exhibition visits. View more information here.

In parallel, at Garagem Sul, a sidekick exhibition:
Archaeological Fragments of Portuguese Architecture (1986–2006)
Models and drawings are privileged tools for understanding architecture: they display the physical form and expression of buildings. This exhibition brings together a group of models that, after having been exhibited in the past to represent works of architecture, were kept safe by the Centro Cultural de Belém. Like the constructed buildings themselves, whose forms they replicate in miniature, time has passed over them and left its marks. Twenty years since they were originally presented, they are now like treasures that show more than reflections of an era. Transformed into fragments, they offer evidence of the way society, at a certain moment, perceived architecture made in Portugal: sometimes exacerbating or diminishing differences between authors and schools, sometimes scrutinising or acknowledging new authors, sometimes forging the possibility of the existence of a Portuguese architectonic culture with its own specific qualities.

About Garagem Sul
Garagem Sul is a space dedicated to architecture at Centro Cultural de Belém, a cultural venue in Lisbon known for its music, dance and theatre program. Housed in a former parking garage, Garagem Sul offers a unique atmosphere for the presentation of architectural works and ideas. Projects at the Garagem seek to present a wide range of different positions through which architects might redefine their role in society, and interrogate new means of building our world.