One of architecture’s fundamental legacies is its own form. Not only is history built from its visual universe, but form is also a common language that brings together architects from all over the world in a collective conversation. In this exhibition of the 4th edition of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, three architects/architecture studios — Johnston Marklee, Nuno Brandão Costa e Office KGDVS —proceed from a potentially infinite repository to build a dialogue that challenges notions of authorship and the limits of form.

Functioning as a “conversation,” the exhibition’s narrative developed through a number of modules that constituted the provisional exhibition space, built in the power station’s plaza. These modules, literal quotes from architectural designs by Johnston Marklee, Nuno Brandão Costa and Office KGDVS, houses the contents that where criteriously selected by Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli from the extensive database that they share online on the digital platform socks-studio.com.

The language of architecture was explored through a sampling of construction drawings, landscape interventions, urban plans, artistic investigation, and other elements. Originating from different time periods and regions of the world, the content highlights what remains constant and what changes, as well as identifies analogies and affinities in the creation of the built environment. Organised along twelve interlinked spaces, with each space incorporating images related to a core element, the exhibition defined a continuous seam of works that are directly inter-related, be it through affinity or opposition.

Curated by Diogo Seixas Lopes (1972-2016), the The Form of Form exhibition was also a process. The ultimate aim was for it to be a “meeting space” able to demonstrate the meaning of form in architectural design, in the past, present and future.