The First Atomic Bomb in History at S+A

Creativity and innovation are at the core of S+A, and art is a provoking and inspiring medium in our architecture. We intersect architecture with every other subject, and art resides within the spaces that we create, it integrates our lines and challenges our understanding.

“Little Boy” is a new edition of the work displayed in the exhibition “Linguistic Ground Zero” presented at the MAAT in 2018. This creation from the renowned Portuguese visual artist João Louro is now part of our studio, thus providing an additional wave of conceptual turbulence – the first atomic bomb in history – with recorded messages, is simple and forceful: destruction, graffiti, poetic and written references come together.

Being a resounding name in Portuguese contemporary art, João Louro tears apart concepts throughout works that communicate between generations. João Louro subverts “the image in contemporary culture, using a series of representations and symbols from the collective visual Universe”. He represented Portugal in the prestigious Venice Biennale of 2015 with the exhibition / Will Be Your Mirror / Poems and Problems. The prolific body of work of this artist is found in major public and private collections, such as in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in the Museum of Art in Rio, Brazil, or in the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, USA.

According to Miguel Saraiva, founder and CEO of S+A, “We consider it a privilege to receive the work “Little Boy” in our studio, which will further stimulate the constant shift of paradigms that structures our conception of architecture, both on the field and in the world. This impressive work of art, with its unique language, shall assist us in deconstructing the past, in order to face the present challenge of designing the future. It is thus with immense pride that the work “Little Boy” by João Louro has been set in our space.

João Louro, reinforces “a work of art lives because it is lived. It brings about memory, but is also future. “Little Boy” contains in itself several layers of communication and it will reveal itself slowly to all who may come across it. It will be a work of discovery, and each onlooker shall follow a different path.

The work will address everyone, thus being a plural work, but one that will always resonate individually. It is a work that contains reliefs, winding areas as well as flat areas, deep valleys where the sun does not shine and peaks full of light. It is a map of an uncharted territory.
What better place than an architecture studio to reveal such “map”? S+A’s studio knows what is like to dare into the unknown, and this work brings about the future yet again.

For both, “art and architecture share a common characteristic that consists in bringing about quality of life for all. When one is surrounded with good art and architecture, it is guaranteed that such a thing will happen. And what do we mean when we say “good” art and “good” architecture? We mean the complexity of the rational journey into the emotional world – without being hindered by preconceptions -, the demand of the depth of thought, the relationship amongst the different areas of knowledge, the will to take chances and to overcome fear. Such is the evolution of those who dare. And if art and architecture stand together, both shall dare the impossible.