Review by Iñaki Bergera in Arquitetura Viva highlights the critical reach of the Luis Ferreira Alves Prize
PT/ENG
The magazine Arquitectura Viva (AV) recently published the review "Un pulso visual" (A Visual Pulse), written by Iñaki Bergera, dedicated to the publication of the Luis Ferreira Alves Prize | 2025 Edition. The text presents a critical and informed analysis of the first Luis Ferreira Alves International Photography Competition, situating it within the contemporary landscape of architectural photography and acknowledging it as a significant contribution to the reflection on the built environment.
Starting from the need to provide architectural photography with its own space for recognition, simultaneously internal to the discipline and open to broader cultural debate, Bergera highlights the curatorial vision of scopio Editions and the way the prize honours the legacy of Luis Ferreira Alves, a central figure in the construction of the imaginary of Portuguese architecture in the last quarter of the 20th century. The review also highlights the solidity of the competition process, evidenced by the composition of the jury—which included Eduardo Souto de Moura, Hélène Binet, and Paulo Catrica—and by the impressive number of entries received.
In analysing the winning works, Bergera emphasises the geographical, thematic, and conceptual diversity of the award-winning series, highlighting how they move away from a merely documentary logic to assume holistic, transversal, and critical readings of the territory, the city, and architecture. Photography thus emerges not as an end in itself, but as a tool for reflection, capable of revealing the tensions, fragilities, and paradoxes of the contemporary built world.
The publication of this review in Arquitectura Viva is of particular significance, not only because of the magazine's international prestige, but also because of Iñaki Bergera's long-standing connection to the Sophia Journal and scopio Editions community, as well as to the Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) research group, based at the Nuno Portas Studies Centre (CENP) of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP). Over the years, Bergera has actively participated in this academic and editorial ecosystem, contributing to the deepening of the critical debate on the relationships between architecture, photography, and landscape.
His reading of the Luis Ferreira Alves Prize | 2025 Edition thus reinforces an intellectual and methodological affinity that has been built over time, marked by a rigorous attention to the image as an instrument of knowledge, interpretation, and cultural questioning. The review also confirms the international projection of the prize and the publication, affirming them as relevant platforms in the contemporary dialogue between architecture and photography.
The work, bilingual (Portuguese-English) and with international distribution, is the result of an editorial partnership between scopio Editions and the Spanish publisher Turner, consolidating the ambition to broaden audiences, geographies, and disciplinary fields, and to stimulate a critical reading of architectural images in the current global context.