A NEW HOME FOR THE FESTIVAL
Mezzo - Joana Oliveira and Giacomo Mezzadri

What is the purpose and goals for this year’s pavilion?
Creating a temporary pavilion is probably W&T's most courageous and daring decision in recent years. Imagining a temporary home in open public space could be read as a manifesto of the ideals that the Festival has been consolidating over its 8 years of existence. The appropriation and revitalization of public space and the interaction with the population will be central themes with this temporary structure as the central point of a program that gravitates around it. The fact that functions such as the bar and the cafeteria, where the artists and the team eat their daily meals, stop being in a private space and placed in a public square will be a form of approximation to the community and vice versa.

The pavilion that we envision for this zero year parts from that principle - override barriers, to create a completely permeable space that offers a ceiling and the necessary protection for the happening of different functions, but that remains open within the square but also that its able to create a small square inside. As in many of our projects we start with easily recognizable archetypes, which adapt to the client's requirements and the specifications of the place. The modular wood structure started from the idea of building "house" and incorporated the proportion of the São Miguel’s pineapple greenhouses in the design to root the project. This double roof helped us to keep the internal space more freely structurally and creates a peripheral corridor that delimits another square or a covered patio.

How do you integrate the pavilion in that square and how does it relate to the theatre?
The pavilion will be a public and outdoor extension of the Theatre, where several shows and workshops will be held to support artistic residencies. The modular structure has been designed in such a way as to be able to vary in size easily and will be divided into 2 parts since the stage can be placed in certain positions depending on the type and size of the spectacle taking place, opening more or less to the square and theatre.

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Excerpts from the interview with Gabriela Lourenço - W&T Jornal 2018