Wide-Angle View: ARCHITECTURE AS SOCIAL SPACE IN THE MANPLAN SERIES 1969–70
Opening of the Exhibition at the Association of Architects, Northern Regional Section, on February 27th at 6:30 PM
Guided tour by Valeria Carullo (photography curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects - RIBA)
The Northern Regional Section of the Order of Architects will host, on February 27, 2025, at 6:30 PM, a groundbreaking exhibition in Portugal that revisits the Manplan series of photographs published by The Architectural Review in 1969–1970, which profoundly influenced how architecture, planning, and society came to be visually represented.
The result of an international partnership between the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Northern Regional Section of the Order of Architects (SR-NRT), the Cityscopio Cultural Association (CCA), and CENP/FAUP – Nuno Portas Center for Studies, through the Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) research group and the Sophia Journal editorial and scientific project, the exhibition proposes a critical reading of how architecture, the city, and daily life were—and continue to be—represented and conceived.
Produced in a context of crisis surrounding post-war promises, the Manplan series marked a profound rupture in the editorial culture of architecture by shifting the focus from the building as an object to architecture as a lived social space. Through sequential visual narratives, inspired by photojournalism and street photography, Manplan addressed fundamental themes such as housing, health, work, education, and leisure, placing people and their contexts at the center of architectural reflection.
The exhibition Wide-Angle View presents a selection of photographs and original materials from the Architectural Press / RIBA Collections archive, digitally printed for this show, including images that have not all been published. The title refers to the use of the wide-angle lens as a technical and conceptual device, symbolizing a way of looking that broadens the field of vision and brings the observer closer to the social reality of the city.
More than a historical exhibition, Wide-Angle View asserts itself as a device for contemporary reflection, particularly relevant at a time marked by the housing crisis, the commodification of urban space, and social inequalities. By establishing bridges between Manplan's critical legacy and current research developed within FAUP and the Sophia Journal, the exhibition highlights the role of photography and image as instruments of critical thinking and disciplinary questioning.
The opening will include institutional interventions, followed by a guided tour by curator Valeria Carullo, photography curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and the presentation of a future international conference associated with the Sophia Journal project. The exhibition will be on display at the headquarters of the Association of Architects of the Northern Regional Section until May 2026, accompanied by a parallel program of guided tours, public talks, and educational activities aimed at architects, students, researchers, and the general public.
By hosting Wide-Angle View, the Association of Architects of the Northern Regional Section reaffirms its role as an active space for critical reflection and dialogue between architecture, image, and society, highlighting the relevance and urgency of the thinking inaugurated by Manplan.
Exhibition Program
Partners | Organization
SR-NRT – Order of Architects of the Northern Regional Section
RIBA – Royal Institute of British Architects
Cityscopio Cultural Association (CCA)
CENP–FAUP — Nuno Portas Studies Center, through the AAI research group, and Sophia Journal
Inauguration Program
February 27, 2025 — SR-NRT Headquarters
6:30 PM — Opening
Session Interventions:
- Andreia Oliveira, President of the Northern Regional Council of the Association of Architects
- Avelino Oliveira, President of the National Board of Directors of the Order of Architects
- José Pedro Sousa, Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto
- Pedro Leão Neto, Cityscopio Cultural Association
7:00 PM — Guided Tour
By Valeria Carullo, photography curator of RIBA
Permanent and Parallel Activities
From March to May 2026, the SR-NRT will host:
guided tours Themes
Conversations with researchers and curators
Educational activities
Target audience
Students, professionals, and the general public interested in: Architecture, photography, urbanism, visual arts, city history, cultural studies, and urban policies.
Free admission.
More information coming soon on the SR-NRT, CNEP - FAUP, and CCA channels.
MANIFESTO
From Manplan to the housing crisis: broadening the field of vision
Architecture has never been neutral. It has never been merely form, technique, or style. It is a field of forces where social conflicts, political choices, and worldviews are inscribed. The Manplan series (1969–1970) made this condition explicit at a time when the promises of modernism were in crisis and urban reality was inevitably exposing the flaws of an incomplete social project. Fifty years later, this critical lucidity has not lost its relevance—it has become urgent.
Today, faced with a global housing crisis, the financialization of territory, increasing exclusion, and the fragmentation of cities, it is important to recover and update Manplan's radical gesture: to look at architecture from the perspective of life, and not the other way around. To place people at the center of architectural representation and thought. To recognize that every spatial decision produces real effects on bodies, relationships, inequalities, and possibilities for the future. “Wide-Angle View: Architecture as social space in the Manplan series 1969–70” SR-NRT, a groundbreaking exhibition in Portugal that revisits the influential Manplan series, asserts itself within this territory of critical continuity.
Not as a nostalgic exhibition, but as a device for interpreting the present. The archive here is not a closed space, but an active field of investigation, capable of illuminating contemporary tensions. Manplan's images—raw, intimate, unsettling—continue to challenge us because they reveal a persistent truth: the city is lived before it is designed, and housing is a right before it is a product.
The wide-angle lens that gives the exhibition its title is more than a technical resource. It is an ethical and political stance. Expanding the field of vision means rejecting simplistic readings of urban reality, rejecting quick fixes for structural problems, and confronting the discipline with the social consequences of its own actions. It means accepting that architecture actively participates in the production of inequality, but also that it can—and should—be an instrument of reparation.
Between Manplan and the present lies a line of continuity: the understanding of architecture as an inevitably political practice. The housing crisis is not an accident, but the result of accumulated choices—economic models, legislation, planning, and disciplinary culture. Given this, it is not enough to design more buildings; it is necessary to rethink ways of living, property regimes, forms of cooperation, and the urban imaginaries that sustain the contemporary city.
Wide-Angle View calls upon architects, students, researchers, and citizens to take a stand. To look at the archive not as a formal repertoire, but as critical memory. To recognize in photography not only a means of representation, but a form of thought. To understand that every image is a stance—and that all architecture communicates, even when it intends to silence its effects.
This manifesto affirms that Manplan's relevance lies precisely in his refusal of indifference. In his ability to expose discomfort, to make visible the flaws of the system, and to insist that quality of life is a collective issue. Today, as then, architecture only makes sense if it is conceived from concrete life, its fragilities, and its urgencies.
Expanding one's field of vision is, therefore, a commitment to the present. An invitation to critical action. A demand for disciplinary responsibility. Between archive and present, between image and project, between architecture and society, “Wide-Angle View: Architecture as social space in the Manplan series 1969–70” | SR-NRT argues that there is no habitable future without an attentive, informed, and profoundly human look at the city we build.
Pedro Leão Neto
Maria Neto
More information coming soon on the SR-NRT, CNEP - FAUP and CCA channels.
