Nuno Brandão Costa and Sèrgio Mah
interview by ALBERTO DE VIRGILIIS
ADV:
YOU:
I really appreciate the way you expose this projects, why did you decide to split your exhibition in two parts, one on the first floor, with the videos, and the other one inside the building?
This is a formal issue, we wanted to make this kind of two exhibitions , one more conventional inside the building where every architect has to explain its own project with one model, one typical floor plan and architecture photographs of the finished work. We made this tricktical way of the space creating , with relations of the space of the Palazzo , with the texture and the color of the space . We didn't want to make any kind of hierarchy, each visitor can organize himself as he wish.
What came first? The way to make the exhibition or the place where the exhibition would have been?
An important fact is that Portugal doesn't have a pavilion in the Giardini, so we had a chance to choose, and we choose this Palazzo and choose some spaces inside, at first we wanted to use the top floors with white walls that are more appropriate for an exhibition, but later we understood that this relation between the representation of this architecture and this very dramatic and baroque space would have been more interesting.
What about happines for you?
I think the public building itself represents the idea of democracy, because it's an open building for everybody. So if this open space can be for everybody, if it has the potential to give comfort and happiness to people and if it makes you feel to be part of a collective it is good architecture.