Gallery Talks

For the rentrée session of the Gallery Talks programme, we asked architect, curator and author Pedro Gadanho to reflect on his curatorial career, which has centred on the impact of the environmental crisis on contemporary architectural practice. What paradigm shifts are being defined in this more ecologically correct design logic? This will be one of the questions raised.

Pedro Gadanho, a 2020 Loeb Fellow at Harvard University, holds a Master’s degree in Art and Architecture and a PhD in Architecture and Mass Media from the University of Porto.
From 2012 to 2016, he was the curator of contemporary architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he coordinated the Young Architects Programme and organised exhibitions such as ‘9+1 Ways of Being Political’, ‘Uneven Growth’ and ‘A Japanese Constellation’. From 2015 to 2019, he was the founding director of the MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, in Lisbon, where he initiated over fifty projects, including the exhibitions and publications ‘Utopia/Dystopia’, ‘Tension & Conflict’ and ‘Eco-Visionaries’. From 2020 to 2021, he was the executive director of the bid by 17 municipalities in the Portuguese interior to become the 2027 European Capital of Culture, after which he took up a position as visiting professor at the University of Beira Interior.

In spring 2024, he was a visiting professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Gadanho is the author of ‘Climax Change! How Architecture Must Transform in the Age of Ecological Emergency’ (ACTAR Publishers: New York/Barcelona, 2022). His previous book, ‘Arquitetura em Público’, won the FAD Prize for Thought and Criticism in 2012. He is the editor of the bookazine Beyond and the blog Shrapnel Contemporary and contributes regularly to international publications.

Fotografias de Sérgio Monteiro / Galeria Municipal do Porto