
Garagem Sul at Centro Cultural de Belém—the Lisbon gallery dedicated to architecture—opens a Portuguese iteration of At Play on September 28, 2021. Presented initially at CIVA in Brussels, the exhibition is adapted to Garagem Sul and expanded with new works.
Architects 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.
