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.