Fertile Futures expresses the understanding of "The Laboratory of the Future", the general theme proposed by Lesley Lokko for the 18th International Exhibition of Architecture – La Biennale di Venezia 2023, which calls for, in addition to a set of urgent issues, a set of how-to guidelines. “The Laboratory of the future" urges us to create, from a methodological perspective, an exploratory programme, simultaneously clear and complex, based on laboratory and collaborative dynamics.

The title of the proposal underlines the speculative character of the Representation of Portuguese Architecture, aiming to contribute to the design of fairer, more inclusive, more equitable and more diverse Futures, but also more Fertile ones, heralding a greener, more imaginative, generous, abundant, positive, productive, responsible, feminine, and plural future.

The programme proposed by Fertile Futures defends the laboratory dimension of architectural design in dialogue with other disciplinary areas, and the ability to move forward, seeking to imagine the future, requiring the contribution of multidisciplinary discourse in the design of solutions to emerging issues that tend to go beyond the singular domain of the work of architects. While discussing and proposing strategies for the management, protection and transformation of freshwater and contributing to a debate that is common and global, Fertile Futures focuses on the scarcity and management of this resource, in the Portuguese territory.

Investing in the strategic complementarity between practice, theory and teaching in architecture, a tripartite approach to experimentation and common reflection is defined: seven Design Teams, whose work is the body of the propositional exhibition in Venice; five Assemblies of Thought, moments of reciprocal (re)learning based on the coexistence of knowledge; and an International Summer Seminar where students collectively rehearse speculative installations.

Expanding the ephemeral existence of a national representation in Venice, Fertile Futures will involve new generations in the development of solutions for the reservoirs of the future, based on close contact with seven hydrogeographies, exemplifying the anthropocentric action on water, natural and finite resources.

Young architectural ateliers are encouraged to work with specialists from other disciplinary areas, starting from design laboratories. Based on innovation and mediation strategies which seek to understand different scales of reality, the common imagination of more positive scenarios is encouraged and other ways of performing architecture are also fostered.

Based on local involvement with the specificities of territorially dispersed hydrogeographies, the propositional solutions under development in the Design Teams aim to promote forms of global action, as well as the discussion of new ways of operating at the territorial scale, as well as at the small scale.

The work developed by the seven teams of architects and specialists occupies the seven exhibition halls in the Palazzo Franchetti. In the central hall, a water line organises the space and its flow emanating from a gesture that evokes symbolic and metaphorical dimensions, in a sensory and emotional experience.

Supporting and expanding the work developed by the Design Teams, Fertile Futures has a group of consultants, from different disciplinary areas and a wide territorial scope. It constitutes an independent thought laboratory that informs and supports the construction of speculative architectural visions of social, environmental and climate justice, in an active and participatory way, fostering the development of multidisciplinary practices.

The Assemblies of Thought, in multiple locations between Portugal and Venice, allow for the monitoring, support and expansion of all these experiences, deepening and enriching the thematic approach, as well as contributing to “tracing a path for the public”, involving the local, Portuguese and international community in the discussion of the proposed central theme. The consultants are: Álvaro Domingues, Ana Tostões, Andres Lepik, Francisco Ferreira, Luca Astorri, Margarida Waco, Marina Otero, Patti Anahory, Pedro Gadanho and Pedro Ignacio Alonso.

Thematic awareness, collaborative experience, and an understanding of an expanded field of action are shared at the International Summer Seminar. The " temporary displacement” of architecture students from diverse contexts, to Fundão, aims at the horizontal sharing of knowledge, through "direct experience" and the opportunity to establish new dialogues.

Fundão is part of the list of eight Portuguese cities included in the European Union Mission for Adaptation to Climate Change. The municipality is a territory that is deeply affected by water scarcity and highly intensive agriculture, fires and desertification, and simultaneously, is representative of investments in social inclusion and expanding technological developments in the inland region.

With tutoring from the Design Teams and the participation of national and international students, selected by open call and reinforced by institutional partnerships, the intervention materialises in the self-construction of installations scattered throughout the territory, developing strategies for the capture, fixation, use and/or redistribution of water in the municipality of Fundão.

Addressing common and intersecting issues, Fertile Futures defends that a laboratory cannot present known results at the outset and, therefore, collaborating with other disciplinary areas, it promotes the production of speculative investigations, presented in word and drawing form, for an exhibition that thinks about a fertile, sustainable and equitable future, to be presented at the 18th International Exhibition of Architecture – La Biennale di Venezia 2023. In summary, Fertile Futures reiterates the transformative capacity of an architectural exhibition, as a knowledge production platform.