Terra

Terra is the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2022. With different meanings, depending on the scale and the observer, Terra expresses territory, city, landscape, the place where we belong or a continent seen from the sea. It may be a habitable planet or matter for cultivation. It may be in excess or lacking, an obstacle or an element in the construction of communities.

The programme consists of four exhibitions, four books, three awards, three days of conferences and a selection of Independent Projects. This edition’s design is chief-curated by the Portuguese duo Cristina Veríssimo and Diogo Burnay, founders of the architecture studio CVDB.

As an international forum that promotes questioning around research and practice, Terra incorporates a declaration of intent and a call to action. It proposes the evolution from the current fragmented and linear system model, characterised by an excessive use of resources, towards a circular and holistic system model, motivated by a greater and deeper balance between communities, resources and processes.

Terra suggests that, after a context of closure because of the pandemic, the future should be reassessed by intersecting and exchanging knowledge and practices capable of coexisting, contributing to a more sustainable future for the planet and all its inhabitants.

Portugal has always been characterised by challenging the world, used to looking outside and relating to other cultures. We take advantage of this attribute innate to our peripheral condition and our openness to others to confront different knowledge inspired by the past and the present in a projection awakened for the future. This reflection unfolds in four central exhibitions that, through their different perspectives and glances, invite a wide range of participants to present a global scenery made up of a plurality of geographies and cultures.

The main exhibitions are: Multiplicity (MNAC), Retroactive (MAAT), Visionaries (Culturgest), Cycles (Garagem Sul - CCB)