MAAT Lisbon joins Future Cities Forum's 'Cultural Cities'

Beatrice Leanza, Director of MAAT Lisbon - photographed by Valentina Sinnis

We are delighted that the Executive Director of the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon (MAAT) Beatrice Leanza, is joining Future Cities Forum's 'Cultural Cities' debate with Lord Mendoza of the DCMS later this month.

Launched in October 2016 as part of EDP Foundation’s long-lasting commitment to cultural patronage, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) is an international institution dedicated to fostering critical discourse and creative practice that inspire new understandings of the historical present and an empowering engagement with the common future.

Located on the riverfront of the historic district of Belém, in Lisbon, the EDP Foundation campus covers an area of 38,000 square metres and comprises a repurposed power station — the Central Tejo, an iconic example of industrial architecture originally built in 1908 — and a newly built complex designed by the London-based architecture studio AL_A (Amanda Levete Architects). Both buildings house exhibitions and events programmed by the museum and are connected by a landscape project by Lebanese architect Vladimir Djurovic.

EDP Foundation is a private non-profit institution created by EDP – Energias de Portugal, S.A. in December 2004. The creation of EDP Foundation consolidated EDP Group’s commitment to promoting citizenship. Focussing its activities on sustainable development, it defines as overall goals the promotion, development and support of social, cultural, scientific, technological, educational, environmental and legacy-protecting initiatives, with particular emphasis on the energy sector.

A curator and critic based in Beijing for over 17 years, Beatrice is the former creative director of Beijing Design Week (2013-2016) and chief curator of the ongoing research program 'Across Chinese Cities' featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale at the 2014, 2016 and 2018 editions. She is co-founder of B/Side Design, an organization developing strategies of urban and social impact that spearheaded the establishment of The Global School, the first independent institute for design and creative research in the PRC.

Her writings and projects have appeared in publications such as Artforum, Abitare, CNN Style, Domus, Dezeen, Disegno, Frieze, T Magazine (The NYTimes), The Good Life, among many others. In 2016 she published the book ‘(115) Ideas in Action – Critical Design Practice in China’.

Since September 2019 Beatrice has been the the executive director of MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon.

Below: aerial view of MAAT, and the waterfront at Belem, Lisbon (Photograph by Pieter Niemann)