Petites Folies sobre o Douro is one of the projects selected as part of the satellite activities of the Porto Design Biennale 2021. It proposes a set of site-specific installations/objects/architectural spaces in public spaces, reconfiguring local realities and redefining urban routes by creating new points and perspectives of the landscape: Other Landscapes.
The spatial experience is highlighted, with the rediscovery of the body from the scale of the object, and the discovery of the city from the construction of new focal points of attraction and reference. Based on a pedestrian logic, closely articulated with Alastair Fuad-Luke’s curatorial proposal, an architectural route is proposed that offers stopping points for new discoveries, of others and other landscapes: a pause to look and re-recognize. The intervention network articulates spaces of different scales and natures that share, as a common denominator, the opportunity to contemplate a broader landscape through the definition of new frameworks, rediscovering new perspectives on the Douro.
Through the unexpected occupation of institutional spaces, along with sites of significant human and natural heritage now integrated into the city’s public space, a new route is established, usually hidden from common daily paths. The renewal of these places is carried out by teams of students from two architecture and design schools, ESAD – Escola Superior de Artes e Design and FAUP – Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade do Porto, through a cooperation established between both, initiated by two of their professors, Ana Neiva and João Nuno Gomes.
The project, entirely based on experimental processes, unfolds over four stages: an architecture and design workshop, the construction of the objects in situ, the enjoyment of the objects by the broader community during the biennale, and finally, their transformation into a future social contribution.