Sunshades
18 Jun 2010
Gulbenkian Garden
Free admission
The more frequent visitors to the Gardens of the Gulbenkian Foundation will remember seeing, in previous years, rows of awnings designed by the architect Teresa Nunes da Ponte, which were always taking on different pictorial forms. This year, Inês Lobo (Lisbon, 1966), who, among other projects, was the architect of a school for an African city, has designed a group of sunshades made out of simple material at substantially low costs.
The idea therefore follows a logic for the possibility of construction in countries that are lacking in resources, with the aims of protecting people from the heat, creating shaded areas where people can gather together and shelter from the sun and naturally intervening in a careful way in a space such as this garden, which urges people to make use of it in their daily lives and invites them to take a relaxing stroll through it. The final result is an installation that, on this occasion, cannibalises tropicalism, from a European point of view.