Lisbon Architecture Triennale has returned for its sixth edition, with exhibitions, installations and contributions by the likes of Dutch studio MVRDV and Japanese studio Tomoaki Uno Architects.

Titled Terra, the Latin word for earth, this year's Lisbon Architecture Triennale is a call to action centring on sustainability and forging a balance between communities, resources and processes.

The 14-week-long event was curated by Portuguese architects and educators Cristina Veríssimo and Diogo Burnay. It takes place until 5 December 2022 and includes a number of exhibitions, book launches, conferences and fringe events across the city of Lisbon.

Each of the exhibitions and events highlights climate change, human reliance on resources as well as social, economic and environmental injustices and how these issues are connected.

Read on for five key exhibitions at the 2022 edition of Lisbon Architecture Triennale:

Multiplicity

Curated by Cityscapes Magazine co-founder Tau Tavengwa and anthropologist and writer Vyjayanthi Rao, Multiplicity is an exhibition that looks at ways architecture and design can respond better to global challenges such as inequality, climate change and conflict.

The exhibition is organised across several of the National Museum of Contemporary Art's minimally decorated rooms, with books, posters and other exhibits arranged on folio cabinets and plywood tables to encourage visitors to engage with them.

It also includes case studies of architecture projects, such as Wiki House by Architecture 00, BookWorm pavilion by Nudes and Plugin House by People's Architecture Office, which highlight architectural and design-led initiatives and solutions to social and global issues.

Retroactive

Retroactive is an exhibition at Lisbon's Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), curated by design studio Taller Capital founders Loreta Castro Reguera and José Pablo Ambrosi.

It identifies ways to help communities living in "vulnerable places due to overcrowding, lack of resources and basic service infrastructure" through the use of architectural initiatives.

"Retroactive explores the suturing tools of communities in urgent need of architectural solutions that may reconcile their sense of belonging and spatial dignity," explained Lisbon Architecture Triennale organisers.

Cycles

At the Garagem Sul museum, Cycles highlights the circular economy of materials, presenting ways in which designers, architects and creatives can reuse waste. The exhibition was designed by local office Rar.Studio and curated by architect Pedro Ignacia Alonso with art curator Pamela Prado.

"Cycles addresses the role of architecture within the endless processes of transformation and redistribution of matter, and showcases the possible encounter between architecture and sustainability, economy, heritage and memory," said organisers of Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

A focal point of the exhibition is Falca, a mound of cork piled in the rear corner of the gallery by artist Lara Almarcegui.

Visionaries 

Visionaries is described by its curator Anastassia Smirnova as an "invitation for action". It is arranged within the Culturgest centre across a collection of rooms, which each shed light on radical ideas spanning different categories or themes.

Among the visionary projects is Dutch architecture studio MVRDV's proposal to raise Eindhoven's cathedral by 55 metres to insert social and public functions below it, alongside an exploration into French architect Roger Anger's utopian city Auroville in India. Other contributors include Japanese studio Tomoaki Uno Architects, Spanish architect Andrés Jaque and Spanish office Ensamble Studio.

"Their projects, more than mere physical and spatial structures, are ambitious and controversial prescriptions for planetary strategies," said Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

"In many different forms, from the bedroom scale to city models, these radical prototypes are open to being productively interpreted, not just replicated, by future generations."

Independent Projects

Alongside the main exhibitions, a total of 16 projects have been developed in response to the triennale's theme of Terra. Twelve of these are exhibited at the event's headquarters at Palacio Sinel de Cordes, while the other four are dotted across the city of Lisbon.

Among them is After Plastics, a project by KALA.studio that imagines a landscape where microplastics play a vital role in a new plant growth. Meanwhile, designers Zhicheng Xu, Mengqi Moon He, Stratton Coffman, Calvin Zhong and Wuyahuang Li, are presenting Lodgers, a proposal for temporary housing for different life forms in Nevada, built from local materials.

Lisbon Architecture Triennale takes place from 1 October to 5 December 2022 in Lisbon, Portugal. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

The photography is by Sara Constança.