DOUBLE HAPPINESS. 2009. 6,4 x 3,7 x 6,6 m

Billboard and swings mix, steel ladder, steel lattice platform, protective nets on steel structure. Urban reanimation device. Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture © DIDIER FIUZA FAUSTINO



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On the border between architecture and art, the French-Portuguese architect DIDIER FIUZA FAUSTINO creates spatial visions that take man’s body as their elementary unit of mesure allowing him to explore architecture as “tool for exacerbating our senses and sharpening our awareness of reality“.

Founded in 2001, his collaborative studio Mésarchitectures (the name plays between meaning “bad architecture” and “my architecture”) is notorious for installations that mix performance, electro-punk, Sci-Fi and architecture which illustrate the innate relationship between architecture and the human body.

Double Happiness responds to the society of materialism where individual desires seem to be prevailing over all. This nomad piece of urban furniture allows the reactivation of different public spaces and enables inhabitants to reappropriate fragments of their city. They will both escape and dominate public space through a game of equilibrium and desequilibrium. By playing this “risky” game, and testing their own limits, two persons can experience together a new perception of space and recover an awareness of the physical world.

And good news: a series of five new installations by DIDIER FIUZA FAUSTINO is actually on view at the Calouste Gulbekian Foundation, Lisbon until 3 April 2011. Don’t Trust Architects is also the largest exhibition ever held of the artist in Portugal.