Full House in opening of the exhibition

"This is the first, of others that will follow, of several readings on the relationship between the legislative power and architecture, which will include other exhibitions but also seminars and various initiatives", said the executive director of CA, Nuno Sampaio, mentioning that the curator Susana Ventura was invited to this exhibition, who looks at the Assembleia da República as an object of essay on the appropriation of the Palácio de São Bento buildings by different political regimes.
This exhibition was another way of getting to know the Parliament: through the projects of the various buildings since 1834 and the way in which the several political regimes took over them, but also through the photographs of Paulo Catrica, who entered rooms and spaces closed to the general public and enabled them a new look at the Portuguese House of Democracy.
Susana Ventura, curator of the exhibition, acted as a guide on the tour of the “House of Democracy”, whose centrepiece was an elliptical space reminiscent of the hemicycle, designed by Luísa Bebiano, explaining that this is an attempt to “think about the Assembleia da República as an object of essay on the relations between space and power, as well as to perceive “the way in which architecture expresses a certain political project”.
Divided into four nuclei, the exhibition showed us the different appropriations of the building according to the current regimes, namely, the Constitutional Monarchy, First Republic, Estado Novo and Democracy. A different view even for those who are used to walking through the Palace's corridors. “If you want to get to know your house well, it's important that you leave it”, recalled the vice president of Assembleia da República, Jorge Lacão, who was also present at the ceremony.
Luísa Salgueiro, mayor of Matosinhos and also a deep expert on the ins and outs of the Palace, since she was a parliamentary deputy for twelve years, did not hide her satisfaction that everyone now has the opportunity, but also the obligation, to get to know the Parliament.
“More than an exhibition, it is an opportunity to celebrate a partnership with AR, which is an important milestone in the history of architecture”, said the president of Casa da Arquitectura, José Manuel Dias da Fonseca.
The current Assembleia da República, seat of the Portuguese Parliament, was the setting and stage for important social movements and political regimes that determined our historical destiny: the Liberal Revolution of 1820, which two years later gave rise to the first Portuguese Constitution; the abolition of the Monarchy and the consequent establishment of the Republic in 1910; the dictatorship of the Estado Novo and its end, after the Revolution of 25 April 1974, with the desired restoration of Democracy.
The history that the building accumulates is also inseparable from the history of Portuguese architecture, dating back to the end of the 16th century, when the Monastery of São Bento da Saúde was founded, designed by the architect Balthazar Álvares and considered one of the most relevant examples of the floor style due to its monumentality and territorial imprint, which will certainly have enhanced its subsequent adaptation to Palácio das Cortes.
The stories intersect over the centuries, stimulating an understanding that should not be limited to the succession of events in order to try to think about the very meaning of what political space is in our present. The political system has conditioned, on several occasions, the architecture of the building (including the choreography of the bodies and the iconography) and of the part of the city where it is located, while architecture, in turn, contributed to the creation and affirmation of a centre of power or the city as a space of freedom.