The 7th Lisbon Architecture Triennale positions itself at a planetary scale, framing the city as a dense node of the Technosphere: its mass of human-made materials, infrastructures and systems rival the Earth’s own processes. Its guiding question, “How Heavy Is a City?,” unfolds across three venues. “Fluxes” (MAAT) approaches cities as systems shaped by accumulations of matter, energy and information, calling attention to the need to recalibrate analytical tools in the face of planetary instability. “Spectres” (MUDE) turns to imperial and colonial architectures of extraction and power of contemporary capitalism. “Lighter” (MAC/CCB) addresses architecture’s complicity in excess and disciplinary isolation, proposing strategies of reduction, reuse and reorientation to resist the accelerating Anthropocene.

Curated by Territorial Agency, the Triennale adopts a thought-exhibition model with questions by artists, scientists and activists presented predominantly through video works. The repetition of horizontal video grids demands prolonged attention and relies on energy-intensive digital infrastructures and non-recyclable materials, sitting uneasily with the concern for the material and energetic weight of life. Plastic curtains enclosing video installations are a telling example: visually light, yet ecologically and symbolically heavy. This questions whether works such as an exhaustive map of five centuries, “Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power since 1500,” by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler require physical exhibition at all. Marina Otero Verzier’s research on the energy footprint of data centres, itself presented onscreen, exposes such digital excess as an internal contradiction.

The refusal to simplify complexity is the Triennale’s strength and vulnerability. Dense content risks intellectual overwhelm. The show is most persuasive when complexity is translated into affect and embodied experience. “Correspondences” by Soundwalk Collective stands out as a meditation on ecological loss, memory and resistance. Its sensorial construction allows urgency to be apprehended without recourse to explanation; it becomes not only intelligible, but felt.

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