Architecture has established itself as a field that goes beyond construction, using its conceptual, social, technological and political instruments to analyse phenomena that are more or less evident or imperceptible. Ranging from local history to the recently coined hyperobjects, its practice is becoming closer to academia and rhetorical thinking than it is to the subject, emphasising the suppleness and breadth of an ever more demanding and multidisciplinary education.

How heavy is a city? is the tagline launched for Lisbon Architecture Triennale’s seventh edition. It recognises this tendency and invites philosophers, scientists, artists, activists and naturally architects to join in the discussion, investigating the general and particular contexts of a city.

Apart from the material, a city is informed by a whole array of data – spectra that roam from place to place, between transmitters and receivers, street benches and decentralised servers: traffic information, different infrastructures, security cameras, wireless networks, cybernetic grids, data on pollution, noise, the unseen webs of crime, flow, progress and history. Images that a city can generate go beyond the visible. Data computing, satellite technology and infrared or ultraviolet spectral logs can create immediate and more accessible diagrams and image content. We are thus faced with new landscapes, making graphic and scientific analysis objects not only worthy of speculation but also wonder and observation, reshaping the concept of reality and adding new ethical, aesthetic and aesthetic implications to the reading of a given area or experience.

The seventh edition features a space-time review of the city, a continuum in perpetual transformation and construction, led by the Territorial Agency collective founded by Ann-Sofi Rönnskog and John Palmesino, which has set out to analyse the territorial transformations brought about by the Anthropocene and Climate Change. No longer are we dealing with several decades of analysis or centuries – we are facing an unprecedented era, marked by events that have left traces – and wounds – on cities and territories, with documental archives that continue endlessly and need to be drawn together and dealt with.

The debate on the burden of the technosphere seems inevitable from this perspective, with a mass already similar to that of the biosphere. How can we reduce the weight of all this infrastructure, which increases exponentially every day as technological demands become more complex? How can we achieve lighter energy efficiency that stops the constant production of waste that is extremely detrimental to planetary life? What new power sources are emerging with the multiplication of new technologies and digital media? What other ways of coexistence and cohabitation are possible in an increasingly violent interspecies clash, threatening ecosystems that volatilise and become extinct as temperatures rise? Or, finally, drawing on the basic concept of the curators’ proposal, what new “coalitions” and political agents can take the reins of this debate, ensuring the proper and correct handling of public affairs and democratic institutions?

These and many other questions addressed in the programme devised by the curators will be addressed by experts and thinkers, including Anne McClintock (intersectionality, gender and racial studies), Veronica Liebl (Ars Electronica), Emanuele Coccia (ecology and philosophy), Lucia Pietroiusti (Ecologies at Serpentine), Pablo Peréz-Ramos (landscape architecture), Mónica Bello (Arts at CERN), etc. The invitees represent this transient and forward-thinking coalition, which presents case studies with a profound influence on how territories and institutions are managed, relevant to the field of contemporary studies.

Spread across three major exhibition centres – Fluxes, Spectres and Lighter – the Triennale is reaffirming the importance, in turn, of measuring and technical issues that drive architectural projects, the remote gathering of scientific and morphological data, and responsible construction based on materiality to offset and mitigate population growth by 2050. To be considered, too, are the Independent Projects selected from a universe of 76 applications from all over the world.

The partnership with the e-flux platform and the Talk, Talk, Talk meetings programme (curated by Filipa Ramos) provide scientific support for the whole curatorial proposal, with a line-up of participants from different knowledge spheres – from philosophy to nanotechnology, from new materialisms to engineering. Laura Tripaldi’s Soft Futures, published in Intensification (the title of the partnership between the Triennale and e-flux), is an interesting epistemological, ontological and phenomenological consideration of human life and nanotechnology, not as separate entities, but as intrinsic parts of the same organism. It brings together a cast of biorobots and xenorobots to map technological development and engage in speculation about an optimistic future, discarding any schisms or prejudices about Nature, Culture and Humanity.

The Lisbon Architecture Triennale is planned for autumn 2025, with its opening days on October 2, 3 and 4. Talk, Talk, Talk runs from October 29 to 31.

The Triennale will also award the Début Prize (honouring one of the 20 studios selected for the shortlist), the Universities Prize (out of 35 projects in the competition) and the Carreia Prize. Álvaro Siza is in charge of the trophy’s design.

The programme and exhibition routes can be found here.