EL ÚLTIMO GRITO
Social design
Since 1997, El Ultimo Grito (Roberto Feo & Rosario Hurtado) have produced work that responds to an ongoing investigation into the nature and representation of systems. This work is both the means to analyse and advance their ideas in the subject and the object of the investigation itself. The results they produce are presented in various contexts and take different forms that have ranged from installations, objects, films, performances and publications to curatorial, editorial and academic projects. In 2012 they were awarded the prestigious London Gold Design Medal acknowledging their contribution to design in the UK.
MUF ARCHITECTURE/ART
Socially engaged art and architecture
MUF is an internationally recognised practice whose work is a collaboration between art and architecture – simultaneously pragmatic and endlessly ambitious.
“What Muf has been arguing for all these years can be difficult to define, let alone defend: the value of complexity in a commodified society in which all things must be measured…Their advocacy for the benefits of public space is critical in an increasingly unequal city, a message that is both profoundly political and utterly necessary. The group is making space for the city to be able to hold on to its humanity, without which it is no longer a city.”
– in interview with Katherine and Liza in the Financial Times by Edwin Heathcote.
CRITICAL CONCRETE
Architecture and social engagement
Critical Concrete, is a non-profit organisation taking on challenges linked to the construction industry and aiming for sustainable practices. Located in Porto, where the need for affordable housing solutions is ever noticeable, they challenge the regular dynamism of real estate development and promote new mechanisms to rehabilitate social housing, and improve public and cultural spaces in low-income communities. They also question the political meaning of sustainability in architecture, which has ambiguous connotations. For Critical Concrete, their understanding of sustainable architecture means: long lasting and easily repairable structures, made of locally sourced materials and upcycled waste. Critical Concrete has focused on developing projects that promote social inclusion which combat poverty and discrimination through participatory workshops on social and sustainable architecture in a range of methods which include education, research, design, and consulting.
LUÍSA MONTES
Participatory architecture
After my studies in Architecture between Seville and Puerto Montt (southern Chile). I understood that architecture could be an instrument of change and I finished my degree with a research work on participatory urbanism based on squatting. Public space belongs to the citizen and participatory practices encourage rooting and networking in a community.
After the pandemic I travelled to Paris and spent a year with Batisseurs Compagnons, where I learned a lot of DIY and saw the power of participatory and associative projects in a practical and real way.
Now I work halfway between conventional architecture and trying to open a space for other forms of intervention in the public space with Chacho mi Tierra, an association in birth with much to offer for change towards sustainability.
DANIEL TALESNIK
Architecture for homeless people
Daniel Talesnik is an architect from the Universidad Católica de Chile (2006) and holds a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture from Columbia University (2016), awarded with the dissertation “The Itinerant Red Bauhaus, or the Third Emigration.” He has taught at the Universidad Católica de Chile, Columbia University, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Technische Universität München. At the Architekturmuseum der TUM, where he worked between 2017-22, he curated Access for All: São Paulo’s Architectural Infrastructures (2019), which was also shown at the Center for Architecture, New York (2020 – 2021), Swiss Museum of Architecture, Basel (2021), and excerpts at the São Paulo (2019) and Venice (2021) Architecture Biennales. His last Munich exhibition, Who’s Next? Homelessness, Architecture, and Cities (2021-22), can be seen at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg between October 14, 2022 and March 12, 2023. In the 2022-2023 academic year, Talesnik will be a Teaching Associate in Architectural History and Theory at the Department of Architecture, Cambridge.
Photo © Laura Trumpp
JOÃO LEAL
Anthropology of artefacts | Objects and Material Culture in the History of Portuguese Anthropology
Born in Lisbon. PhD in Social Anthropology from ISCTE. Professor at the Anthropology Department of FCSH – Universidade Nova de Lisboa and researcher at CRIA. He has worked on ritual and performance – with emphasis on the Holy Ghost Festivities – and on the history of anthropology in Portugal. Author of the books “As Festas do Espírito Santo nos Açores: Um Estudo de Antropologia Social” (Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 1994), “Etnografias Portuguesas (1870-1970): Popular Culture and National Identity” (Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 2000), “Anthropology in Portugal: Masters, Journeys, Transitions” (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte, 2006), “Azorean Culture and Identity: The Azorean Movement in Santa Catarina” (Florianópolis: Editora Insular, 2007), “Azorean Identity in Brazil and the United States: Arguments about History, Culture and Transnational Connections” (Dartmouth: UMass Dartmouth, 2011) and “The Cult of the Divine. Migrations and Transformations (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2017).
FILOMENA SILVANO
Fashion anthropology, ethnography and design
In the year in which she finished her degree in Anthropology (1982) she was selected to join the research team of the project “Espace et Développement : spatial development and regional identities in Portugal”. This fact came to significantly determine her career, on the one hand because it allowed her to join an international research team at a time when this possibility was, in Portugal, very limited, and, on the other, because it determined her initial area of specialisation, the Anthropology of Space. Her interests, which relate questions of collective and individual identities with the study of space, habitat, objects and, more recently, expressive culture, consumption and fashion, have been maintained over time and have been the subject of work in the context of various research projects. She has collaborated on four documentaries by directors João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata. She is the author of the books “Territories of Identity”, “Anthropology of Space”, “From House to House: On an Encounter between Ethnography and Film” and “Fashion Anthropology”.
Culatra 2030
Sustainable Energy Community
The ‘Culatra 2030 – Sustainable Energy Community’ initiative is a pilot project for energy transition in Culatra Island, Algarve, Portugal, covering multiple aspects of the green transition. It implements the ambitions of the Smart Specialization Strategy (S3) in the Algarve, using a Participatory Community Diagnostic to create a real laboratory for the green transition, focusing on the specific needs of the island and capitalizing on its assets. The key to its success is the active participation of the entire island community. The initial Community Participatory Diagnostic was based on a fully inclusive participatory process that brought together public entities, academia, businesses and communities. After the initial phase, a new governance system was implemented for the participatory exploration of transition pathways, supported by different funding opportunities that are continuously explored.