In Belém we visited the new Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, which brings together artists, designers, architects and visionaries in Amanda Levete’s dramatic, shark-shaped building.
The displays focus on global threats, environmental change and mass population movement.
Tomás Saraceno’s Thermodynamic Imaginary (above) is a sustainable housing future of balloons that draw energy from the sun and the earth’s radiation. The Center for Genomic Gastronomy wrote The National Dish, in which they brought scenario planning to bear on Portuguese food. The Living exhibited mycelium bricks, their energy neutral and biodegradable building materials. Diller Scofido and Renfro presented Exit 2008-2015, a startling summary of the effects on the world population of war, drought and flooding (below).
I would have liked less apocalypse and more solutions, but this is an unusual and challenging gallery of blue-sky thinking.
MARSHALL COLMAN 