Natural Beauty

Natural Beauty explores how the rational nature of construction can embody a form of natural beauty, as an internal coherence of the architectural artefact. The exhibition explores an intelligible beauty where constructive rationality links each part to each other, as a system to create an organic architecture. This allows the subject to be understandable and shareable by all, while staying relevant as a discipline established on a historical and theoretical basis. This reflection on constructive rationality leads to questions beyond the strictly technical and scientific limits of structure and construction, highlighting a genealogy of major examples of works, commissioned in an architecture journey by the portuguese artist Tatiana Macedo.

Suspended model based on Gaudí’s designs for the calculation of the vaults and structures of the church at the Güell Colony © Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera. Photographer: Pau Giralt-Miracle

The exhibition grasps two main components: a selection of works by architects and students projects selected from an international competition (Lisbon Triennale Millennium bcp Award)*. These works are gathered and classified throughout different forms and complementary readings around the question of constructive rationality, from gothic architecture until today. Karl Blossfeldt’s photographic work from the 20s is presented in the form of a chandelier that illustrates these concepts, to understand the underlying rules in the construction of form, at the roots of their harmony and coherence.

Karl Blossfeldt © Fábio Cunha

Natural Beauty results from the reflection on constructive rationality supporting the acceptance of the architectural discipline, as a series of theories developed through time and that can be renewed, reinterpreted and redefined regarding contemporary means and needs.

Curator
Laurent Esmilaire (FR)
Laurent Esmilaire curator of the exhibition Natural Beauty
Laurent Esmilaire has been working at Éric Lapierre Experience since 2011 and has been an assistant professor at the Architecture School of la Ville et des Territoires de Marne-la-Vallée since 2014. Graduated in Architecture since 2009, he works as a coordinator of several projects since 2011, specialized in design and construction.
Tristan Chadney (FR/UK)
Tristan Chadney curator of the exhibition Natural Beauty
Tristan Chadney is an architect and integrates, since 2013, the Éric Lapierre Experience studio. He was born in Cambridge in 1988 and graduated in 2013. Since 2016 he has been an assistant professor at the Architecture School of la Ville et des Territoires de Marne-la-Vallée. As a project coordinator, his work is multidisciplinary: design, construction to the study of details.
Participants
arc en rêve, Claudio Albanese, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Ateliers Romeo, Beaux-Arts Paris, Bibliothèque Kandinsky - Centre Pompidou, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Bollinger + Grohmann Ingenieure, Christian Bourdais, Brno City Museum, Conseil économique, social et environnemental, Couvent des Jacobins, Petr Dvořák, École Camondo, ensa Nantes, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Fondation Le Corbusier, Viviane Hernandez, Herzog & de Meuron, Istituto Regionale Ville Venete, Max Kesteloot, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Alexandre Leducq, Faustine Lejour, Hélène Lemoine, Mairie d'Arles, Mariette Maaskant, Miller & Maranta, Alexis Markovics, Bogumil Mitelski, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Palladio Museum, Catherine Prouvé, Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / Sanaa, Scatola Cultura, Matthieu Simonnet, Sílvia Vilarroya Oliver.
Featuring Works
Édouard Albert, Karl Blossfeldt, Antoni Gaudì, Jacques Ignace Hittorff, Philibert de l’Orme, Jean Prouvé
Photographers
Tatiana Macedo (PT)
Tatiana Macedo studied Fine Arts at Central St Martins College of Art & Design in London and Visual Anthropology at FCSH Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She works mainly with photography, film and installation on their expanded fields. As an artist, she was resident in Berlin and exhibited at Culturgest (Porto), Galeria Carlos Carvalho in London and Paris Photo. Her film, Seems so long ago, Nancy (2012) was shot at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London, winning the first SAW Film Prize by the American Anthropological Association. She is the invited artist to the exhibition Natural Beauty, with photographs of European architectural exemplary works for Lisbon Triennale 2019.
Content Loaners
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art Gallery, ETH – Bibliothek Zürich, Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera, RMN – Grand Palais, Vitra
Jury
Eugeni Bach, Patrícia Barbas, Sophie Deramond, Véronique Patteeuw, Anna Rosellini
ACTIVITIES
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