Protocol with Portuguese Parliament

This was the first visible result of the Protocol signed between the Parliament and CA, which aims at the “Archival treatment of projects for the buildings of the Assembleia da República (Portuguese Parliament)”. This treatment involved about a year of work, later materializing in a large exhibition in AR, within the scope of the programming for the bicentennial of constitutionalism, in 2019.
Nuno Sampaio, Executive Director of Casa da Arquitectura, announced that prior to that moment, CA advanced on February 17, 2018 with “a previous exhibition entitled 'The House of Democracy: Between Space and Power', curated by Susana Ventura, which it intended, on the one hand, to make known to a wider public the various spaces that make up the built ensemble of the Assembleia da República, and, on the other hand, to establish critical thinking about the relationship between space and power”.
Recalling that Casa da Arquitectura had its inaugural exhibition Power Architecture on display, Nuno Sampaio added that, in parallel with the exhibition that was made known during the month of February, the institution organized a programme of activities and debates on this relationship between architecture and the Legislative Power.
The President of the Assembleia da República, Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, stressed that the history of the building “is intertwined with the history of Portugal and its different political regimes”, also recalling the “essential public service mission” performed by Casa da Arquitectura: "Because it seeks to remove architecture from its ivory tower, placing it in
dialogue with society, which is, in the end, the ultimate end of architecture and urbanism.”
Also, the mayor of Matosinhos, Luísa Salgueiro, stressed that the CA is “the equipment that will keep the archive of national architecture for future generations”, a legacy that is also part of democratic construction. This Protocol, considers the mayor, “is also building democracy”.
“The Assembleia da República symbolizes the Legislative Power, democracy, but it has also represented several regimes at different times, and this has also had an impact on the building”, said the president of Casa da Arquitectura. According to José Manuel Dias da Fonseca, the exhibition will be “a way of sharing it systematically, very efficiently, for the country and on a global scale”, allowing the population, “especially those who do not live so close to Palácio de São Bento, have access to this very symbolic heritage”.
The architectural elements relating to the buildings of the Assembleia da República included in the signed Protocol relate to various phases of these buildings, namely, the adaptation of the Monastery of São Bento da Saúde to Parliament; the reconstruction / project by the architect Ventura Terra; the interventions produced during the Estado Novo and the construction of the new building / The project by the architects Fernando Távora and Bernardo Távora. These elements consist, among others, of architectural and construction projects for the buildings, including descriptive memories, canvases, execution projects, models, parts of the competition relating to the new building, administrative processes, photographs, or letters.