Where is paradise? This poetic and pointed question guides the research of the Portuguese Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale. Rather than looking upward, the curatorial team thinks of paradise as something shaped by human hands, a landscape imagined, cultivated, and inhabited.
At the heart of the project is Atlas, a publication that brings together 700 images of architecture, landscapes, and territorial fragments from across Portugal. These are organized into eight thematic groups: experience, regeneration, leisure, networks, return, cultivation, simulacrum, and fiction. Each theme offers a perspective through which to reconsider what paradise might mean today.
Designed as a space for pause and reflection within the flow of the Biennale, the Pavilion is a quiet place where we met landscape architect Catarina Reposo and artist Nuno Cera, members of the curatorial team, who shared the thinking and process behind Atlas.
Atlas is the outcome of the curatorial team selection and of a collective process. Launched in January, the public call Onde fica o Paraíso? invited people to mail in printed images of places, projects, and works around Portugal that could contribute to the Pavilion’s vision. Of the many submissions received, 36 were selected for inclusion in Atlas, which takes shape as an open, participatory map of the territory.
“I took some of the images in different parts of Portugal,” says artist Nuno Cera, reflecting on the selection process, “then we asked photographers from different locations about their projects, and we knew a lot of projects too. So this was the selection that we did together as a team.
We then launched an open call asking people: what is your idea of paradise? What is your paradise? And the answers are very personal, in a way. For example, we expected more references to nature or animals, but those were not many. And sometimes, an idea of what paradise is for this person really fits well with another image in the research. So the atlas is this kind of communication between different images.
The collective idea of paradise and the connection with the discipline, with architecture, is in the Atlas. And this was a process that was very anologic, it was made by hand, trying to see the similitudes between images.
Portugal, often described as a garden overlooking the ocean, offers an ideal image of an earthly paradise. Yet beneath this poetic surface lie deeper tensions: overdevelopment along the coast, real estate speculation, the pressure of mass tourism, but also depopulation of the interior, exploitation of natural resources, and an architecture that at times plays a complicit role in these processes.
“We chose to bring this idea of paradise to show that despite the serious challenges we face in the world, we should have hope, and architecture should be part of that hope for the future,” says landscape architect and curator Catarina Reposo. “Because when we begin to talk about climate change, weoften feel that we don’t have the abilities of dealing with it. But for instance, landscape architecture offers meaningful tools when it comes to the regeneration of disused areas, former industrial areas or brownfields. In these places, it’s possible to activate renewal processes through specific strategies: water treatment, rewilding of vegetation, and the return of life to forgotten spaces.
In this sense, the idea of paradise is tied to human action. It’s not something that exists in its original, untouched form, it is something built by humans.”
Inside the Pavilion, Atlas is displayed on a large table, where the images selected through the Open Call are printed and arranged as a visual landscape to be explored. Visitors are invited to move through them, tracing connections, contrasts, and resonances.
Next to the Atlas, an interactive installation extends the theme on a different level. It is a physical and digital environment built from real footage of Portuguese landscapes captured by Nuno Cera and digitally manipulated by Studio 18—25 using artificial intelligence. The result is a sequence of images that transforms filmed landscapes into an altered yet still recognizable version.
The Atlas book and catalogue, published by Circo de Ideias with graphic design by vivóeusébio, will be available soon. It is a visual and conceptual map that brings together landscapes, architecture, and ideas, offering a tangible way to think about paradise today, as a space to inhabit, transform, and care for.
