Every year, more areas in the interior of Portugal face abandonment. Villages and neighbourhoods fall quiet as the population ages. Across five municipalities in the country's heartland, communities are confronted with a question growing urgent across Europe: how do you hold a landscape together within changing contexts and when the climate is rewriting the rules?
Landscape Together responds through caring, seeing and acting – a collective strategy for long-term territorial regeneration. Under the leadership of MAG – Marques de Aguiar, many international partners build experimental structures, run educational workshops and make hidden processes visible. Working across disciplines, architects and spatial practitioners engage directly with the communities and places they inhabit. The produced research is developed into interventions, giving each site the appropriate care needed – and reorienting fragile landscapes for future generations.
The underlying method - Museu Experimenta Paisagem
Central to MAG's method is the Museu Experimenta Paisagem which was built on the legacy of the architect Manuel Marques de Aguiar (1927–2015). Rather than a building with walls, the landscape itself becomes the museum – brought to life through artistic interventions that breathe new energy into selected areas. This is not a one-off event, but a permanent, ongoing program that returns to the same territory to build something lasting over time.
MAG develops its research further through summer schools, university labs and collaborative regional strategies, connecting their international network to create a shared, long-term commitment to the region.
The outcomes are as varied as the sites themselves – from ephemeral performances and public artworks that reveal a place’s latent potential, to long-lasting interventions rooted in collaborative design. Trail mapping and cultural signage production bring spatial and architectural practice directly onto the territory, making it legible. Through community engagement, these methods become visible and shared, inviting visitors to experience the relationship between collective planning and the specific places it gives rise to.
The exhibition
At the heart of the exhibition stands a large-scale immersive installation bringing together objects, sounds and video works. Local stories and lived experiences are drawn into the research, actions and projects developed on site. Enriched with material from all the partners, the installation gives voice to the diverse interventions that have taken place across the project — a collective tapestry of perspectives, practices and places.
1. Experience: The lived landscape of the pilot territory, presenting the actions, collaborations and actors that brought it to life throughout Landscape Together.
2. Learning Through Practice: The design and planning fundamentals developed through the network of universities, experts, artists, studios and curators, revealing how knowledge emerged through the interaction between built works and research.
3. Prospective: Outcomes, such as artistic actions, cultural initiatives and territorial projects, highlighting shared visions for the future and their contribution to long-term transformation.
The Landscape Together partners
Coordination:
MAG - Marques de Aguiar, Porto, PT
Partners:
Chillida Leku, San Sebastian, ES
Cortiçada Lab, PT
Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco, PT
Karsten Huneck and Bernd Trümpler Studio, Berlin, DE
Politecnico di Milano, IT
Turismo Centro de Portugal, Aveiro, PT
Universidade de Coimbra, PT
YOKYOK, Paris, FR
Aedes, Berlin, DE
Affiliated:
Município da Sertã, PT
Município de Proença-a-Nova, PT
Município de Pedrógão Grande, PT
Município de Idanha-a-Nova, PT
Associated:
Whitecliffe University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, DE
Direção Regional de Cultura do Centro, Coimbra, PT
MAG – Marques de Aguiar
MAG – Marques de Aguiar is a Porto-based practice working at the intersection of architecture, curation and territorial transformation. Founded by Marta Aguiar in 1997, MAG approaches architecture as an expanded field shaped by curatorial gestures and context-specific methods — building on the planning legacy of Manuel Marques de Aguiar (1927–2015). In 2019, MAG founded the Museu Experimenta Paisagem, an open-air museum and ongoing development tool for at-risk territories.
Landscape Together is a project (2023–2027) co-funded by Creative Europe. Under the leadership of MAG, the international partners are united around a shared methodology for engaging at-risk communities through art and cultural processes in central Portugal.
