Belém: Demolishing for Staging

In 1940, the Portuguese World Exhibition and Belém seemed to be a single entity. The place helped recount the nation’s glorious history: Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, Tagus river, Praça Afonso de Albuquerque, Torre de Belém. The vastness of the event took over the area and Belém seemed not to have an existence of its own beyond the Exhibition. The Estado Novo regime announced remarkable changes in those empty plots, which were available to host such a grandiose celebration. But what was this place like before 1940? And what did it become after the Exhibition? What was the role of this event in Belém’s urban design?
Curated by Pedro Rito Nobre, this exhibition offers a journey through memories that still exist there and others that have been erased from the site.

With this exhibition I hope that the public (in general, and in particular those who know Belém today, including residents) will gain a sense of how Belém has evolved and changed over time. We get used to places as we know them, and sometimes we do not ask ourselves what was there before, or the reasons why they were transformed. Many of the spaces we traverse today are the direct heirs of the Portuguese World Exhibition, and some elements that are almost surprising or misplaced turn out to be remnants of that event. For those who work in the organization of spaces – from policymakers to architects and urban planners – this is yet another contribution to reflecting on the consequences of design options: each construction, each demolition, each use assignment, has consequences that are sometimes greater than we initially imagined.

Pedro Rito Nobre

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