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8. International Exposition of Architecture
JOÃO NUNES | PROAP
Portuguese representation,
Italian Pavillion,
Giardini di Castello, Venice, Italy
8th September > 2nd November 2002
»LINK

The ancient "art of gardens", widely practised in Portugal, from 16th century country estates to the surroundings of palaces and manors in Plain, Baroque and Romantic architecture, was brought back, as a modern Landscape Design, by the architects and teachers Francisco Caldeira Cabral and Gonçalo Ribeiro Teles, in the mid-1900s.
It is within this more recent and already modern tradition that João Nunes’ work with the PROAP team of landscape designers must be situated, together with the work of other, more or less known, authors like João Gomes da Silva, Luís Cabral or Álvaro Manso.
This group of authors, working within modern Portuguese tradition, has given it a contemporary flavour, using new techniques, materials and forms, even recurring to other creative areas, like the visual arts or design.
Having presented remarkable creations since the 1980s-1990s, the PROAP group commemorated, in 2000, over 15 years of work with Portuguese parks and gardens. Their travelling exhibition, now presented as the Portuguese Representation at the Venice Architecture Biennial, consists of a detailed presentation of four of their most recent works, instances of their versatility and modernity.
These four works demonstrate, on the one hand, the group’s versatility and innovative flair (as it can be seen in the Parque do Tejo project, part of the Lisboa Expo 1998 zone, a vast riverside urban renewal area), while being, on the other hand, instances of their capacity of inscribing themselves in more modest projects, like the renewal and construction work on the outskirts of the largest Portuguese cities (the urban parks of Quinta da Politeira and Quinta da Terrugem), as well as of their abilities for renewing historical gardens, as part of special events (like Porto’s Jardim da Cordoaria, during that city’s mandate as 2001 European Capital of Culture).
This Portuguese representation stresses how important interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are for the Ministry of Culture’s Institute of Contemporary Art, who believes that landscape design, as an articulate practice can be an added value either to architecture and the "art of making a city" or to visual arts creativity – where it can manifest itself in the strengthening of spaces and art works through values of form, colour, light and texture (where architecture design introduces permanent change, with natural scents and sounds).
Our cultural processes can only further evolve through a thoroughly open and creative dialogue between experiences, in the fullest expression of community life.

José Manuel Fernandes
Director of the Instituto de Arte Contemporânea (Contemporary Art Institute)