SHIFT 2026 in Matosinhos Frames Landscape as Repair Tool

The fourth edition of SHIFT—the International Seminar on Architecture and Sustainability—runs October 16 to 17, 2026, in Matosinhos, Portugal. Casa da Arquitetura organizes the event, and Brazilian architect and urban planner Fernando de Mello Franco curates it.

The theme is "Continuities—Socio-ecological recomposition through landscape design." The program opens with one central question: how can design contribute to restoring the ecological, social, and territorial relationships that sustain life?

That framing isn't accidental. Mello Franco proposes viewing the landscape itself as an instrument—a working tool for the socio-ecological recomposition of territories, not scenery around the edges of a project.

What does the 2026 edition change?

The curatorial move is a shift in scale. Instead of treating the city as an isolated unit, the program turns toward the territories that support it. Peri-urban, rural, and natural areas supply the essentials: water, food, energy, and raw materials.

But those same territories carry the heaviest burdens. According to the seminar's framing, they face environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, pressure on soil and water resources, and the growing impacts of climate change. Design, the argument goes, can't address one without the other.

Architects, researchers, and specialists from various countries will gather in Matosinhos to debate that premise over the two-day program. The discussions target the role of design in transforming territories and confronting contemporary environmental and social challenges together.

Why Matosinhos, why now

Casa da Arquitetura, the Portuguese institution behind the seminar, has built SHIFT into a recurring international platform on architecture and sustainability. The 2026 edition doubles down on the connection between landscape design and territory-scale repair.

For practitioners, the so-what is straightforward: the seminar positions landscape design as a method for rebuilding the systems—ecological and social—that cities depend on. That's a broader brief than green space planning, and it's the conversation Mello Franco intends Matosinhos to host this October.