HOMELAND | News from Portugal | 10 anos

It’s now ten years since the 14th Portuguese representation at the Venice Architecture Biennale, where Portugal was represented by the project Homeland, News from Portugal. The Portuguese representation was curated by Pedro Campos Costa, who proposed an unconventional exhibition format, not only because of the form of communication (newspaper), but also because of the unprecedented critical reflection on the theme of housing, a social and cultural reflection of the lives it houses. Although housing was not on the media agenda, it was the basis for this reflection on the social and economic crisis of the moment.
Three issues of the newspaper were launched in 2014, distributed through various vending machines located in the Arsenal. In this way, each visitor passed by and collected the newspaper, so that the Portuguese representation spread throughout the Biennale (and beyond the exhibition centres). The original contents of the Homeland newspaper were carefully put together by a multidisciplinary team of around 60 professionals from a wide range of fields – architecture, economics, sociology, geography, history, anthropology, photography, law and design. Each contribution brought a new perspective on a problem that, while already urgent in 2014, has become even more pressing over the years.

For these reasons, we feel it is our responsibility to celebrate ten years of Homeland. Not only to celebrate what has been a different format for representing Portugal in Venice, but also as an opportunity to debate and reflect on the challenges faced in the last decade and those yet to come. From the paradoxical perenniality of a newspaper, a periodical that endures, we will take stock of the past so that we can idealise the future.