In 2021, Casa da Arquitetura received the donation of the entire collection of the architect, with a total of 8,800 pieces, and invited an international team to design a retrospective of the work.
This Friday, Casa da Arquitetura, in Matosinhos, will open two exhibitions by the Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha (1928-2021), covering 70 years of work from the 2006 Pritzker Prize.
Toward two exhibitions dedicated to the Brazilian architect are entitled “Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha”, curated by Jean-Louis Cohen and Vanessa Grossman, and “Paulo: beyond drawing”, curated by Rui Furtado and Marta Moreira.
After having received the donation of the entire collection from the architect, in 2021, Casa da Arquitetura — Centro Português de Arquitectura invited an international team to design a retrospective of the work of Paulo Mendes da Rocha, with two simultaneous exhibitions.
Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Pritzker Prize winner, donates collection to Casa da Arquitetura de Matosinhos
Both exhibitions are based on the collection donated to the Casa da Arquitetura, with a total of 8,800 articlesencompassing all the material produced during his professional life, from the 1950s to the year of his death.
“Built Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha” will also feature an exhibition project by Eduardo Souto de Moura and Nuno Graça Moura, being installed in the building’s exhibition hall, while “Paulo: For Além do Desenho” will, in turn, be , an exhibition project by Ricardo Bak Gordon and will be installed in the entity’s gallery.
More than 320 projects are part of the donated collection, bringing together around 6,300 analog drawings, 1,300 physical drawings, three thousand photographs and slideshowand also a set of models made by the architect himself, born on October 25, 1928 in Vitória, in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo.
The exhibition titled “Paulo: beyond drawing” aims to offer visitors “the opportunity to have a more intimate experience with the Brazilian architect, allowing them to listen to his vision of the world and his reflections on so many topics that occupied him and that basically, they explain their work,” according to the organization.
Parallel to these two exhibitions, there will be a activity program curated by the architect Nuno Sampaio, executive director and general curator of Casa da Arquitetura, the architect Catherine Otondo and the architect and historian Vanessa Grossman.
This parallel program will feature debates, conferences, site visits, with the aim of creating “a great architectural festival and celebration of the work and person of Paulo Mendes da Rocha”, underlines a text published on the entity’s website.
Pritzker Prize in 2006Mendes da Rocha was honorary associate of Casa da Arquitectura in September 2018 and received the gold medal at the Congress of the International Union of Architects.
Mendes da Rocha died on May 23, 2021, at the age of 92. The architect received the Golden Lion for Career at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, the year in which he also received the Japanese Imperial Prize. In 2017 he received the gold medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Paulo Mendes da Rocha, the most awarded Brazilian architect and responsible for the new Carriage Museum, dies
The Brazilian Museum of Sculpture (1987), the Campinas Art Museum (1989) and the restoration of the Estação da Luz, in São Paulo, converted into the Museum of the Portuguese Language (2006) are among his best-known projects.
In Portugal, the Carriage Museum and the Casa do Quelhas, in Lisbon, are the two own projectsand also of the few works that he created outside of Brazil, where he focused his career.
Paulo Mendes da Rocha also received the Mies van der Rohe prize for Latin American architecture for two consecutive years, from the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture (1999) and from the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2000).
Created in 2007, Casa da Arquitectura is a non-profit cultural entity that develops activity in the universe of content creation and programming for the national and international dissemination of architecture, and has the support of public and private funds, with the Municipality of Matosinhos and the State as the main financiers.
The inauguration of the two exhibitions of the Casa da Arquitetura is scheduled for this Friday, at 9:30 p.m., with the concert “Brazilian music, Portuguese musicians” by the Matosinhos Jazz Orchestra.
Source: Observadora
