Barbas Lopes Arquitectos: Gardens of Stone

Barbas Lopes studio has named Gardens of Stone the cork intervention that will transform the square of the Belém Cultural Centre in the summer of 2019. This is a restless topography, a floor project that reconfigures the way we inhabit the building and opens up spaces still unknown to the public. Every summer, in partnership with Amorim Isolamentos, Garagem Sul challenges an architectural studio to explore the material qualities—texture, smell, density and colour—of black cork agglomerate. To meet this challenge, the project by Patrícia Barbas connects different spaces in the building, using the comfort and warmth of cork to build several gardens into dialogue with site. By shaping the floor, the work offers vantage points to the Olive Tree Garden, the Tagus River or simply the Sky, as well as providing a recreational space between the built geometric shapes and an auditorium to host the open-air cinema programme on warm summer nights. Starting from a unique material and proceeding with an exercise in composition and geometric rigour, Gardens of Stone combines several functions in one form, various forms in one unit, and multiple possibilities in a programme of transformation. After all, architecture also exists to provide the pleasure of warm summer shade.

Within the Gardens of Stone will run an open-air cinema programme every Saturday evening at 9:30pm, this year under the title My Parents. Often, movies explore the relation between sons and their parents, and in the context of this programme there will be three biographic documentaries that present the work of architects and artists through the eyes of their sons. The cycle expands a thread that can be drawn between the 2003 film by Nathaniel Kahn’s My Architect, the 2012 Lullaby to My Father by Amos Gitaï and Thomas Koolhaas 2015 film Rem, on Louis Kahn, Munio Gitaï Weinraub and Rem Koolhaas. We will exhibit three films: on August 17, the less famous feature released in 2002 to anticipate this series, Lucia’s Small intriguing My Father the Genius, that uncovers the success and failures of Glen Small’s architectural experiments. On August 3, the most recent take on the Brazilian acclaimed architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, directed by his daughter Joana Mendes da Rocha and Patricia Rubano, Tudo É Projeto, released in 2017. To conclude, in August 31, it will be screened Nick Willing’s intimate conversation with his mother, in Paula Rego: Secrets and Stories.


Related upcoming events
Gardens of Stone runs parallel to the exhibition The Bones of Architecture, showcasing works from Bruther, Johansen Skovsted, Rui Furtado, Brandlhuber+, 6a, Pedrazzini Guidotti and Alejandro Bernabeu. The exhibition was curated by Mario Rinke and examines the cultivation of structures in the service of architecture.