“More than Housing” is more than an exhibition. It is the coming together of all the schools of architecture in Portugal to celebrate the 50th anniversary of democracy around a common challenge: How will we live in April 2074? It is the disruptive spirit of the Carnation Revolution revived in the institution par excellence for the production and transmission of critical knowledge, the university. It is the culmination of a two year-long process of intense academic activity in which students, teachers, and guests from other fields have created a collaborative space for shared questioning, discussion, and experimentation. Ultimately, it is the voices and ideas of 1751 students of architecture, urbanism, landscape architecture and fine arts, reflected in more than sixty speculative proposals and exploratory projects, all united in their diversity and exhibited on a modular platform made of reusable raw bricks and acid green plasterboard. 

The brick is the symbolic and literal foundation of “More than Housing.” It was the primary building material of architecture’s response to the urgent housing crisis of the post-revolutionary period, as illustrated at the beginning of the exhibition by three paradigmatic neighborhoods of public initiative, developed in the late 1970s within the principles of resident participation and the right to the city originally established by SAAL (Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local, 1974-76). The brick is also the elementary unit of the exhibition design. Its dimensions, 40 x 20 x 19 cm, determine the individual module assigned to each proposal, all of which have the same designated display surface defined as 3 bricks long, 6 bricks wide and 10 bricks high. The brick ensures an overall unity of presentation in the exhibition, conveying a sense of equality among all participating schools, while also allowing for a wide variety of arrangements within each module, so that each student’s proposal can be expressed in all its freedom and singularity. 

“More than Housing” is architecture in action, an exhibition in the form of a collective manifesto, a glimpse into the built environment of 2074 through the visions of the future architects of tomorrow.

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