Banca de DEFESA: LIVIA MORAIS NOBREGA

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : LIVIA MORAIS NOBREGA
DATE: 08/04/2022
TIME: 10:00
LOCAL: Remoto
TITLE:

Spatial Mediation: Buildings as Commodities for Exhibitions Discourses – The Case of
the Bienal de São Paulo (1957-2018)

KEY WORDS:

Bienal de São Paulo. Building. Exhibition. Mediation. Space.

PAGES: 570
BIG AREA: Ciências Sociais Aplicadas
AREA: Arquitetura e Urbanismo
SUMMARY:

This thesis defends the concept of spatial mediation as configurational strategies for the exchange

between people and things which are particularly evident in exhibition spaces – whose main function

is precisely to foster these exchanges. In contrast to other types of mediation, spatial mediation occurs

not through educators or technological devices, but through the system that structures the interaction

between displayed contents and its visitors. This concept is characterized by a double-faceted logic

that concerns the very definition of exhibition spaces – settings for exchange that operate through

the display of artifacts, for cultural and economic purposes. These two facets are made up of pairs of

concepts that address the following issues: 1) discourse and narrative – which describe how things

are arranged in space and how the messages embedded in this arrangement can be interpreted

through spatial navigation; 2) commodity and capital – which represent the syntactic and semantic

role of the building in defining a system of material and symbolic exchanges. These two facets are

objectively represented by the short-term layout of the exhibitions and the long-term layout of the

building that houses it. This phenomenon is investigated at the Bienal de São Paulo (BSP), an

expression that designates both a building (designed by Oscar Niemeyer and his team in 1954), and

a set of exhibitions (with 34 editions, 31 of which held in the same pavilion). This long overlap

between building and exhibitions provides robust evidence for the proposed discussion, which was

obtained through exploratory diachronic studies (on 30 BSP, from 1957 to 2018) and through

specific case studies (on 9 BSP). These studies allowed us to delimit: a) the territory in which spatial

mediation takes place – a spatial system open enough to support a multiplicity of occupations, but

closed enough to minimally structure the movement; b) how it works – by transforming a spatial

system that is simultaneously complex and generic into a system that is highly specific. The first

aspect required the development of three representation models – complex, generic, and specific, to

describe the spatial systems of buildings and exhibitions based on different criteria, thus generating

different levels of network configurations. And the latter enabled the characterization of two types

of special mediation, space as a means and space as an end, whose characteristics describe how the

attributes and elements of the exhibition layout are situated in relation to those of the building layout,

whether within its limits or beyond them (the former related to the notion of commodity and the

latter to a process of commodification). Finally, this approach, which is essentially based on the

distinction between perennial and ephemeral layouts, can provide new perspectives of morphological

thinking for the design and study of uses and internal arrangements of other types of buildings and

spaces.

BANKING MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1132327 - LUIZ MANUEL DO EIRADO AMORIM
Interno - 1149557 - FERNANDO DINIZ MOREIRA
Externa à Instituição - SOPHIA PSARRA
Externa à Instituição - KALI TZORTZI
Externa à Instituição - IOANNA STAVROULAKI
Externo à Instituição - CRISTIANO FELIPE BORBA DO NASCIMENTO - FJN