Casa da Arquitectura and the Liminality of Architecture Centers: Archives, Exhibitions, and Curatorial Strategies in the Digital Shift

Abstract

This study explores the evolving role of architecture centers in the digital age by analyzing the case of Casa da Arquitectura (CdA) in Matosinhos, Portugal, a hybrid institution that functions as both archive and museum. Positioned within the broader context of museum digitization and liminality theory, the research investigates how CdA navigates the spatial, social, and procedural shifts inherent in digital transformation. Drawing on qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews with key personnel and on-site observations, the study examines the institution’s strategies in acquisition, curation, and exhibition design. The findings highlight CdA’s innovative approach to archival visibility, the creation of a multipurpose digital platform (“edifício digital”), and the integration of archival acquisitions with exhibition practices. These practices illustrate a condition of triple liminality of the digital museum concerning its process, position, and place. The study also discusses how digitization reconfigures the museum’s organizational model in terms of accessibility and curatorial complexity. By analyzing CdA’s operational and curatorial choices, the paper discusses how digital museums can act as speculative, process-oriented spaces that challenge traditional boundaries between archive and exhibition, physical and virtual, institutional and public.

1. Introduction

The concept of a “digital museum” has gained significant momentum in academic literature since 2020, suggesting a correlation with strategies implemented during COVID-19 restrictions (NEMO 2020; Resta et al. 2021).

Given that the terms “web,” “virtual,” “cyber,” “immersive,” and “digital” can encompass a variety of approaches, here we categorize digital museums by examining the relationship between an event (the exhibition) and its environment (the venue). Born-digital platforms, designed to showcase virtual artworks, achieve a high level of artistic de-territorialization. Examples include the web-based art institution Rhizome, founded by artist Mark Tribe in 1996, and the Berlin-based platform V4ULT (Watson 2021). In other cases, a physical exhibition is reproduced in a digital format through methods like virtual tours, which facilitate a mediated visitor experience from a distance while also allowing regular onsite visits (Loaiza Carvajal et al. 2020; Resta et al. 2021). Furthermore, it is possible to provide digital content or enhance existing collections in physical venues (Carrozzino and Bergamasco 2010). This last approach will be the focus of this article, particularly addressing the recently established Portuguese institution Casa da Arquitectura (CdA). Since 2009, CdA has been building an archive that includes 13 funds and two collections. The funds belong to 11 Portuguese and Brazilian architects, one architectural photographer, and two related to the Architecture Biennials, as well as Casa da Arquitectura’s own archive. The two collections focus on Metro do Porto and Brazilian architecture from 1929 to 2018.

The Section 1 of this article concerns the theoretical framework of digital museums as liminal institutions. The following part contextualizes the establishment of CdA in the cultural panorama of architecture archives/museums. Section 4, Section 5 and Section 6 cover acquisition, archival curation, and exhibition, respectively, presenting results and discussing the interview with three expert figures at CdA. Finally, we draw a set of conclusions based on the hypothesis that digital museums conform to a triple liminality framework (process, position, and place). Architecture centers such as CdA serve as ideal test cases for digitization strategies because their collections focus on the production process and mediatized representations of an output that is always outside the exhibition venue.

2. Theoretical Framework: The Liminality of Digital Museums

As Watson (2021) points out, contemporary architecture and design exhibitions are digitally translated into new speculative dimensions in which architecture can exist without buildings. They reach way outside the walls of the venue to an extension supported by the infrastructure of networked environments. The movement from materiality to immateriality creates a hybrid experience situated in the liminal state of visitors who look at digital arts, physical collections, and digitized objects.

We argue that the transition from materiality to immateriality could be the key to bringing the general theorization on liminality to the field of museum studies. Building on an understanding of liminality as the state of ‘between and betwixt’, or belonging neither here nor there but moving in a specific direction, digital visits to museums exhibit triple liminality: as a process, the visitor goes to the museum and observes collections, but they are not going anywhere physically; as a social status, they are at the same time museum visitors, but also users of a web interface they are accessing while sitting in front of a laptop screen; spatially, they are within a digital representation of the museum, but not there in the physical sense. This triple liminality shows the middle ground in which museum institutions operate while addressing the digital shift in the museum visiting experience (Resta and Dicuonzo 2024). Very infrequently all three aspects are examined simultaneously, where typically just one facet of liminality is present.

This exploration can be approached from two distinct perspectives: that of the organizations, represented by directors and curators, and that of the visitors, who embody the visitor/user experience. While we addressed the latter in previous publications (Resta et al. 2021; Resta and Dicuonzo 2024), in this instance, we discuss the first perspective by focusing on the strategies of Casa da Arquitectura. In this study, we view the digital museum as a transitional space that mediates a visitor’s enjoyment of a collection, influencing their behavior, social status, and spatial awareness. When we compare the digital museum to other temporary environments, the concept of liminality, as discussed by Turner (1969) and in various organizational studies, often carries a negative connotation. While it signifies a transitional phase, it can lead to emotional and identity loss if that state remains unresolved. In such cases, individuals may never reach the final stage of the rite of passage, referred to by Arnold van Gennep (1960) as “aggregation,” and may find themselves stuck in a state of limbo. Visitors to digital museums, in this new liminal condition, experience transformations stimulated by a knowledge environment that differs from the Modernist museum setting they are familiar with. In the first half of the twentieth century, the connection between physical spaces and human memory and identity was evident: built environments could represent mental structures (Bachelard [1964] 2014). Consequently, the narrative of a museum visit was framed by its architecture, which could be entered and then left behind at the conclusion of the visit. According to Ross Parry (2007), the introduction of networked media into museums made the visiting experience less defined, or frameless, due to the modular and disjointed nature of digital media. While the “visit event” used to have a clear threshold, that of the museum entrance, the same event is now distributed throughout contents, or modules, that are outside and inside the museum. The threshold expands then to a liminal space between the multiplicity of on-site and virtual modules, with a combination of narrative paths.

The concept of liminality as it was formulated by van Gennep and Turner in an anthropological context, as the middle stage of a rite of passage, in digital museums is an intentional transit route from the outer to the inner world. And from the material outside world to the immaterial collection that resides in the museum, accessed and perceived digitally. Whether the spatial domain of this route should be designed from scratch, improved, or just organized in a more inclusive way, depends on the readiness of the museum to explore liminality.

The integration of the triple liminality (process, position, and place) in the digital museum experience—related to its organizational aspects—with the virtual liminality that reflects a visitor’s shift from the physical to the digital realm (which aligns more with an anthropological perspective on liminality) offers an intriguing framework for examining the evolving interpretations of art, collections, objects, and immersion.

Contemporary architecture presents a challenge in acquiring digital assets from ateliers, developing new strategies to organize institutional archives, and designing exhibitions that consider this variety of formats. From the visitor’s perspective, a well-designed hedonistic experience certainly puts digital museums in a different light, in which the liminality of the digital is not an experiential limbo, but an in-between space in which cross-platform experiments are possible. The institutions, on their end, serve as bridges between the physical and digital realms, though they may still be liminal since architecture is a physical manifestation of society.

Under this light, we examine the trajectory of a recently established institution, Casa da Arquitectura, as a hybrid museum/archive that is constructing its identity while the digital shift opens up new challenges to architectural practices. We will see that this concept of digital museum associated with architecture centers has a liminal status that unfolds between archive and exhibition, physical and virtual, institutional and public. Through interviews with institutional decision-makers, we understand how the curatorial project of contemporary architectural exhibitions is shifting toward a digitally enhanced representation of society. The triple liminality framework will guide the development of the argumentation for what relates to the process, identity, and location of digital strategies.

3. The Establishment of Casa da Arquitectura

Established in Matosinhos, Portugal, in 2007, Casa da Arquitectura—Centro Português de Arquitectura is a non-profit cultural institution dedicated to architecture, aiming to collect, manage, archive, and share architectural collections. The board of management includes representatives from the city hall of Matosinhos and Porto, the Portuguese Ordem dos Arquitectos, the port administration of Douro e Leixões, and the Associação Empresarial do Porto. Executive Director Nuno Sampaio, interviewed by the authors for this article, is responsible for developing the overall strategy of CdA (Casa da Arquitectura 2017). It seeks to promote both national and international architects and architectural works, while also having a specific geographical focus, as we will see in the following paragraphs. The core activity revolving around the documentary archive is expanded with cultural events and scholarly research.

In 2007, the Matosinhos City Council acquired architect Álvaro Siza Vieira’s family house, in Rua Roberto Ivens, to host the collection of the Álvaro Siza Documentation Centre. The initial concept of a monographic documentation center expanded to encompass architecture as a whole. In 2009, a promissory contract was signed to hand over the collections of projects from fifteen additional architects. Documents from Álvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Fernando Távora, Gonçalo Byrne, and Manuel Aires Mateus, among others, were intended to be transferred to CdA (Casa da Arquitectura 2019). However, the main condition of this contract was the construction of a new building in Matosinhos, designed by Álvaro Siza, which was never built due to the impossibility of raising the €40,000,000 needed for its completion. With a new budget of €7,000,000, the project relocated in November 2017 to the refurbished Quarteirão da Real Companhia Vinícola, in the same municipality (Moreira 2018). The complex, built between 1897 and 1901, consists of a system of elongated pavilions that were used for packaging and exporting wine. It features the first steam cooperage in the region, as well as administrative offices (da Silva Takahashi 2019). Architect Guilherme Machado Vaz preserved the spatiality of the ruined warehouse through a structural rehabilitation work, transforming the pitch-roof pavilions into an exhibition venue with a total area of 4700 m².

CdA has established a recognizable presence and visibility, which is reflected in the increasing audience numbers and the growing collection of items donated to its archive. As a newly established institution, CdA implemented a digital strategy as part of its 2017 project. The press kit distributed during the three-day opening event highlighted activities that featured virtual and augmented reality, in collaboration with the Digital Fabrication Lab (DFL) at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (Casa da Arquitectura 2017). In their article on J–A Jornal Arquitectos, Machado e Moura and Baía (2022) explain how the general interest surrounding architecture archives in Portugal stemmed from a political dispute over Álvaro Siza’s decision to prefer a foreign institution, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), instead of a national one for the donation of his work documents. In fact, both the CCA and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) served as models for new organizations established in the 1980s and beyond, which aimed to create archives with exhibition spaces dedicated to architecture. In Portugal, after overcoming initial difficulties and political pressure, Fundação Marques da Silva (FMS) and CdA developed a robust material and organizational infrastructure to manage the increasing volume of donations from architectural practices. FMS mostly received material related to Porto, while CdA’s geographical focus included Portugal and Brazil. The physical space of the archive, which is generally relegated to hidden rooms in museum basements, is now increasingly being publicly displayed. At CdA, it “occupies a prominent position […] and has become a ‘mediatised archive’ that can be seen directly from the ticket office through a large glass wall, exposing scenographically the models in Eduardo Souto de Moura’s archive” (Machado e Moura and Baía 2022). In the following paragraphs, we will analyze the strategies of archival acquisition, organization, and exhibition at CdA with the support of the Executive Director Nuno Sampaio, the Director of CdA archive José Fonseca, and one of the curators of the Collection of Portuguese Architecture 2000–2024 for CdA Carlos Machado e Moura. They were interviewed in April and May 2025 for 50 to 90 min. All interviews were audio-recorded with the participants’ consent and transcribed verbatim. The transcriptions and audio files were shared among the authors to ensure the accuracy of the transcription process.

The semi-structured interview is divided into three thematic domains, which correspond to the following sections discussed in the text: Analog and digital acquisition of contemporary architecture, the archive as a digital building, and Exhibitions of Modern and contemporary architecture at CdA. The first part is dedicated to the reception of the works. We ask about the model of selection and modes of acquisition, what national and international institutions were involved in the process, policies on the donation of digital assets, and socio-political considerations. The Section 2 concerns the organization of the archive. We ask about the process of cataloging, drawings, photos, sketches that are digital-born assets, conservation and preservation procedures, and the archive as a living entity. The third part focuses on exhibitions. We ask about exhibiting architecture, public engagement, how digital media affects the way exhibitions are designed, curatorial workflow, and future challenges. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis and deductive coding, following the stages of familiarizing with the data, generating codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, and reporting.

4. Analog and Digital Acquisition of Contemporary Architecture

The establishment of a collection is the foundational step for young museums. During this initial phase, the focus is on acquiring records and organizing transfers, purchases, and donations, which consume much of the institution’s efforts. In the late 1980s, David Williams (1987) analyzed the trend of museum computerization and demonstrated how digital technologies, such as databases and information management software, became essential for managing acquisitions. Today, contemporary architecture centers have achieved varying levels of digitization, with some even fully virtualizing their exhibition spaces. Acquisitions also spark political debates because they imply the accumulation of works obtained from sources in different geographies. Aric Chen, past Lead Curator for Design and Architecture at M+ (Hong Kong), suggests that the act of approaching architectural practices from a different country, as he did with Japanese architects to be included in the permanent collection of M+, can be misunderstood as a form of imperialism (Watson 2021). At the same time, national institutions might be uninterested or infrastructurally inadequate to host specific collections. Consequently, donations of significant works that fall within the sphere of movable heritage can be part of an agreement between countries on the conservation, study, and use of those items.

In this regard, Nuno Sampaio explained that CdA has “various types of agreements. I’m in Brazil [at the time of the interview] because we’ve made an agreement with the Public Archive of the Federal District in Brasília (ArPDF), to grant them access to part of Lúcio Costa’s archive—or rather, part of the digital archive.” In fact, since 2021, CdA has held Lucio Costa’s extensive personal collection, which includes diverse documents related to his professional and personal life, featuring elements of the Brasilia Pilot Plan and spanning nearly a century of his intellectual output. In the director’s view, “people are usually reluctant to share, but when sharing happens, everyone gains—both institutions benefit.” Hence, the agreement is hinged on the possibility of digitizing Lucio Costa’s work, which makes the Brazilian counterpart a stakeholder in the architect’s legacy. Digitization is, in itself, a currency for trading across institutions that previously had to argue over the displacement of physical documents.

At the local level, emerging architecture centers are working to create synergies through shared space and equipment. In Denmark, for instance, the Danish Architecture Centre (DAC) collaborates with the Danish National Art Library, which maintains extensive archives on Danish architecture. To bridge the gap between the two institutions, a significant collection of their architecture archival materials has been digitized, making nearly 57,000 photographs, over 85,000 drawings, and around 160 physical models accessible to both DAC staff and the public (Figueiredo 2023). CdA, at the moment of its foundation, could look at one main national archive of architectural heritage, which is the collection at Forte de Sacavém (Lisbon), maintained by the Direcção-Geral dos Edifícios e Monumentos Nacionais (DGEMN) since 1998, now part of Direção-Geral do Partrimónio Cultural (DGPC). CdA curator Carlos Machado e Moura highlights that the DGEMN “collected a lot of material, but without having the means and the possibility to activate the archives they collected. So, part of the strategy […] is also to be able to give a proper space to some archives that might be located in other institutions, for instance.” We can understand that having a digital component from the beginning shapes the display of objects and how the museum functions. As we can see in Figure 1, CdA can provide its collection with an extensive exhibition venue in the main building and other satellite spaces in the Real Companhia Vinícola complex. After it was decided to move the project of CdA to its current location, the Forte de Sacavém national archive of architectural heritage collaborated with CdA in the design phase, when they signed a protocol to “act as consultants for Casa da Arquitectura in the way the programme was conceived for this building […] and the main layout of the building. They helped us with the practical aspects and how it could be better. Also, it was almost to the most infinite detail. For example, the selection of the equipment for scanning, the furniture for books, textual documents, and drawings. The protocol was very beneficial to Casa da Arquitectura,” José Fonseca says.

This episode of straightforward know-how transfer signals the importance of having a flexible decision-making process in the organization: The director underlines that “when you speak with CdA, you’re speaking with an association. The strength is completely different, because we are not the State. We receive funding from the State, but we are not a governmental body. And that comes with advantages too—we’re not tied down by bureaucracy or affected by government changes, which often alter the leadership of public institutions. We never wanted to be dependent on political shifts. Architecture, and the promotion of architecture, had to be carried out by an autonomous, independent entity—one that still abides by public procurement rules, since part of our funding is public—but that also involves the private sector.”

The same flexibility applies to spatial design. Architecture centers are hybrid institutions that often begin as small, semi-private initiatives and later grow rapidly in response to societal sensitivities toward the discipline. When the archive is initiated alongside the building design, one depends on the success of the other. The CCA was designed with a specific collection in mind. Its exhibitions primarily showcase items from its own holdings, while also incorporating materials loaned from various institutions, individuals, or architects as additional resources. Architects Peter Rose, with Phyllis Lambert and Erol Argun, were already aware of the building’s intended future content from the beginning. At that time, “there was no model for such an institution, there was no precedent for such a building. The CCA had to be invented” (Lambert 1989). In the interviews, the CCA, together with the DAM in Frankfurt and Drawing Matter in London, are mentioned as the main archives to compare with CdA, “although with many differences regarding the funding, the dimension, the history,” Carlos Machado e Moura says. In the director’s view, the goal “is to create a concept within society. That’s why we’re different from the CCA, because our aim is to work for everyone—for society as a whole, not just for architects. In that sense, we’re more similar to MoMA or the Centre Pompidou, but exclusively focused on architecture.” Similarly to the CCA, they are hybrid forms of architecture museums and archives, in which the program activities are structured on four pillars: collect, preserve, and interpret documents; act as a documentation center; circulate the collection through exhibitions and publications; develop study programs and collaborations with researchers (Canadian Centre for Architecture 1988). This brings us back to the first facet of triple liminality that we have introduced earlier. Namely, the process of enhancing a digital museum experience from an organizational point of view, situated across two well-established models, the archive and the museum.

Through the website, users can access five virtual exhibition tours held at the institution, offering the opportunity to explore not only the exhibition spaces but also all physical contents on display—visual materials, technical drawings, photographs, maquettes, and audiovisual content—as they were originally presented. As we will discuss in the following section, from all the gathered materials, CdA has made a total of 11,583 records accessible online, including 99 models and 719 projects. In total, the archive showcases the work of 122 architects and includes a bibliographic collection of 1213 items (Figure 2 and Figure 3).

5. The Archive as a Digital Building

The organization of architectural archival material offers multiple perspectives on how digital assets have changed the way institutions make their collections available to the public. The digital projection of the archive concerns the second facet of liminality, the institutional positioning, or rather, how its core identity is shaped by the archival collection. CdA is an original case on how digital items are archived and made available for consultation, serving as a benchmark for comparable initiatives.

One way to look at this digital presence is to consider what aspect of virtual simulations has impacted the physical world (Resta 2024). Philosopher Federico Campagna (2021) warns that the moment in which “the material conditions keeping its hardware operative will have collapsed, the digital archives to which this civilization has entrusted its cultural legacy will also vanish.” If the products of culture are being increasingly digitized, the functioning of the digital infrastructure is paradoxically dependent on material resources, which makes our digital legacy fragile. Take the cyberattacks on the British Library in October 2023 and those on Internet Archive in 2024, which rendered two crucial repositories of culture unavailable for months, as critical examples of such a scenario. The director explains that “the digital files must naturally have redundancy—they need to be stored in multiple locations, like a bank does. Often, this information is stored outside the country to avoid the risk of natural disasters.”

CdA addressed the issue with a horizontal strategy: to make all the materials in their archive available online, at least as a goal. This digitize-all approach is only possible until the extension of the collected items, the extension of the collection, has not reached a threshold of technical feasibility: saturation of storage capacity, lack of dedicated staff, or else. After reaching this point, similar institutions have adopted digitization policies linked to systematic curatorial projects. This approach also involves creating an agenda organized around specific research themes (Borasi et al. 2019). At CdA, the repository of digital assets is called edifício digital (digital building), accessible through the institutional website, as a virtual counterpart to the physical museum/archive. Director Nuno Sampaio describes its structure as composed of five key elements:

• The first is the digital archive, which allows users to view everything stored in the Casa. This is a monumental task because it is the final step in a long and financially demanding process of archival treatment.
• The second level is CdA’s own activities, all of which are documented. Since the time of COVID-19, all exhibitions have been photographed, and today it is possible to virtually visit each exhibition held at Casa da Arquitectura. You can see what the exhibition looked like physically and access its content—view the models in 360 degrees, see the drawings displayed in the showcases, and examine the exhibition design itself. These exhibitions are preserved for posterity in the digital building. It also includes all the related media coverage, such as articles published in newspapers when the exhibition opened. This is what they refer to as the parallel program. When CdA launched the digital building, they made 300 films available. This role, as a document repository, is enhanced by a component of entertaining the audience.
• Educational activities and services.
• A digital shop, where visitors can access or purchase related content and materials.
• The digital building promotes architectural itineraries that CdA organizes across various buildings, following customized routes planned by the staff. This is the part they call the architectural tour. From the platform, it is possible to book those visits and to arrange a guided tour.

Such a multi-purpose platform is the core tool proposed by CdA to exhibit its collection outside the Real Companhia Vinícola complex. For museums whose collections are based on audiovisual and digital material, making the collection digitally accessible is an important goal in the dissemination strategy. In a comparable reference case study, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), a national museum of film, TV, videogames, digital culture and art, has expanded the physical experience in the museum with visits from home through a tool called Lens. Since 2001, the ACMI Lens has engaged visitors by allowing them to pick their favorite items and organize a customized exhibition to be explored after the visit, in more detail. It consists of a physical token that visitors can take home and use to visualize a different version of the exhibition.

While Lens bridges the curation of digital and physical content, Collectionscope, an open-source software engine, visualizes the collections in immersive 3D digital environments. It is used by the American Museum of Natural History and The Met, among others.

The Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden has also designed an online platform, Expedition Online, which makes accessible the whole collection of 42 million objects while having only part of it physically available in the exhibition space.

Machado e Moura and Baía (2022) emphasize that the CdA archive is fundamentally mediatized, made accessible both as a digital space and as part of the visitor’s ritual. This implies that the archive not only aims to exhibit everything stored online but also seeks to be physically visible on site. When visitors buy a ticket in the hall of the museum, standing across the counter, they face a large archival scenography through a glass screen where architectural models, drawings, and other material from the archive are visible. Also, guided visits in the archive are organized on a regular basis (Figure 4).

From being a hidden part of the museum, the archive has become a visible entity in the exhibition space, to the point of being the first and most recognizable space, as is the case with CdA’s. Its digital presence and the visual transparency on site allude to a shift from storage rooms to active venues of architecture museums. The living archive concept harnesses various forms of media, such as motion capture, photos, videos, and texts, to create an interactive and immersive experience that revitalizes memory and knowledge. This combination allows the archive to serve as a digital prosthesis, emphasizing the body as the central site of knowledge. By engaging with interactive platforms that offer narrative choices, users can experience a deeper emotional connection to the archive’s materials, permitting a participatory immersion (Grau et al. 2017). Additionally, the availability of drawings and photos online can encourage researchers from abroad to approach the CdA archive. When asked about this aspect, Nuno Sampaio explains that “in order for the archive to be living, it must be growing, constantly worked on, and open to receiving people and visitors. That way, like any living being, it grows and survives. If it is closed, doesn’t grow, doesn’t open up, isn’t exhibited, doesn’t receive visitors, and doesn’t have people studying it, then it’s a dead archive. And that’s not what we want.” The full cycle of functioning of the archive starts from “physically restoring the material. Once the material has been restored, it needs to be digitized, and finally, it must be made available to the public with information about the document. And the production of this information is the most expensive part of the process.” Hence, digitization is the concluding stage that incorporates documents into the edifício digital. After that, the life of the document continues with activities of dissemination. CdA “is not, by any means, only an archive” director of CdA archive José Fonseca says; because the mission is to use the collection for “exhibitions, publication of books related to material of the archive or not, conferences, debates, guided tours of architecture, educational services. And that’s how we try to keep the material that we have here alive.” The archive can be performed in the sense that it becomes a source to produce knowledge. Open House activities are essential initiatives to establish a dialog with the citizens, but the normal contribution of architectural archives is measured by the specialized users. In Carlos Machado e Moura’s view, “architectural archives are not for everyone.” They are primarily alive “for people who study and do research on architecture, so that archives can be useful and can be performed in multiple ways: supporting scholarships, supporting the travel expenses of researchers […], either in academic or non-academic contexts. What they see, study, and analyze in the architectural archives is one of the most interesting ways of rendering this material useful.” Towards this objective, in 2024, CdA started to grant ten PhD scholarships every year for students to develop a doctoral thesis related to the collections held in the archive.

A final step to making the archive a living entity is considered to be the production of original multimedia content. In this way, “the archive can be performed, displayed, distributed through films. Many institutions, including the CCA, are now producing their own audiovisual content. And CdA has also added this format to the online resources available. Film is another way of exploring the potential of the archive,” says Carlos Machado e Moura.

Among the five virtual tours available is that of the archive itself, where storage spaces, shelves, and sliding racks are shown (Figure 5 and Figure 6). This original feature gives the archival space the same relevance as the main exhibition galleries and enhances its mediatized status. Regarding our overarching formulation, the second aspect of liminality about positional implications resonates with the ambiguity of these museum areas, usually associated with safe, impenetrable domains, which virtual visitors can now examine in detail. Only digital tools, such as the virtual tour mentioned above, allow the architecture center to open the archive while controlling its physical access.

6. Exhibitions of Modern and Contemporary Architecture at CdA

The third aspect of liminality in digital museums, after the core collection is acquired and the archive is organized, concerns the arrangement of places, which we will discuss with the exhibition proper. This is the moment in which quality, diversity, and conservation of the archival material are put to the test of various curatorial approaches. As museums adopt digital practices and prioritize scalability, their original mission of enriching public engagement becomes secondary. By digitizing collections, museums risk transforming into facilitators of platform capitalism, shifting their ideological roles in society (Borasi et al. 2019). Open online content often comes with a perspective that the platform where the information is stored will gain a dominant position, bringing the artworks into privately owned initiatives (i.e., Google Arts & Culture). In this “Uberization” of art, the transformation of digital objects into tradable assets through platforms embraces a privatized, hypercapitalized model. This shift highlights the tension between artistic autonomy and reliance on algorithmic structures (Lotti 2016).

Museums struggle to categorize architectural objects within traditional art forms, as the design processes and mediums used by architects often defy conventional classifications. The influence of digital media complicates this further, as it plays a crucial role in the creative process yet is frequently lost during transitions to new systems and formats, hindering future understanding of architectural development. Consequently, the essential native digital files and data sets necessary for comprehending architectural projects risk being overlooked in favor of more established forms like sketches and models, raising questions about their significance in exhibitions and preservation efforts (Lynn 2013). On this aspect of the archeology of the digital, Carlos Machado e Moura underlines the connection between architectural works and their modes of production, which necessitated specific hardware available at the time of design conception. The transition “from analogic to digital forces us to explore the archaeology of media, because it allows us to think of the conditions in which such drawings or films or photographs were made.” This includes the dissemination of print and magazines popularized in the 1960s, with the widespread availability of mimeograph machines, or the way material was photographed and photocopied. Such a posture then challenges digitization because it separates the rendering of documents from the original reproduction tools. Exhibitions must find a balance between the flattening experience of digitized media and accessibility. In fact, “the archive would need to acquire all the hardware they need to reproduce them. It would be interesting, for instance, to archive tapes in the same way we do with drawings. One cannot explain Frank Gehry, or Zaha Hadid and Patrick Schumacher, without understanding what technology facilitated their design,” Carlos Machado e Moura says regarding the two main practices that spearheaded the digital shift in the profession in the 1990s. The collages created by Superstudio or Archigram right after 1968 are the result of a series of tools that were available at that very moment. Because of the incessant updating of technology, José Fonseca explains that PDF has demonstrated to be the most stable format to receive, store, and reproduce digital material acquired from architectural practices. Even CAD files, which can be edited for the various purposes needed for an exhibition, are not as durable due to frequent software updates.

At CdA, the curation of exhibitions is not limited to a single team. The director serves as the chief curator. Once a theme is determined within the museum’s cultural program, architects and researchers are invited to contribute their expertise. This approach creates a collaborative curation process, combining the efforts of the institutional leader responsible for planning with recognized experts in the relevant field. For CdA, the exhibition output is not only a cultural happening, but also the way the archival collection is reinforced with new material derived from the show (Figure 1, Figure 7 and Figure 8). Nuno Sampaio says that they are “the only institution in the world that builds architectural collections with curatorial direction focused on a specific territory.” For example, the exhibition on Brazilian architecture, Infinito vão: 90 anos de arquitetura brasileira (Figure 8), selected 90 projects built over 90 years. The curators, Fernando Serapião and Guilherme Wisnik, deeply familiar with the architectural landscape of the territory, first strategized the acquisition of this thematic collection, and then the material was shown in the exhibitions. This policy links the curatorial research for an exhibition to targeted acquisitions that will remain in the archive. After the Porto exhibition, Infinito vão had a follow-up opening at the SESC 24 de Maio in São Paulo, Brazil. The same happened with two exhibitions on the architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, and with the architect Fábio Penteado. In other words, “we receive this material, process it, and curate various exhibitions from this collection. […] And we don’t accept projects that aren’t donated,” Nuno Sampaio says. Typically, Casa da Arquitetura follows a policy where there’s a strong parallel between the collections it displays and the archive it shows. Conversely, it organizes exhibitions and later requests access to that specific project. It doesn’t always request the architect’s entire portfolio, because sometimes the architect doesn’t have such a relevant body of work yet to warrant preserving everything. However, individual works might be of interest to show, and those works can also be part of the collection. This led to the formation of curatorial teams to advise on the selection and incorporation of Portuguese contemporary architecture in the CdA collection, which best represents the evolution of the country’s architectural production. João Belo Rodeia, Ricardo Carvalho, and Graça Correia, covered the period from 1974 to 1999, while Jorge Figueira, Paula Melâneo, and Carlos Machado e Moura investigated the period from 2000 to 2024. One immediate result of the curated list of projects and publications was the opening of the exhibition O Que Faz Falta. 50 Anos de Arquitetura Portuguesa em Democracia, 2024–2025, curated by Jorge Figueira with Ana Neiva (Figure 1). In the future, the same pool of projects will allow curators to inform new narratives based on typologies, locations, techniques, and other parameters.

However, when a project is “selected,” we are looking at the making of its design and not really, or solely, at the built form. Because this would lead to a paradox of exhibiting architecture by representing complex spaces of buildings and cities in a physical format (Pelkonen 2015). Architecture is “way beyond its materialization in a given building. Architecture is a discipline, not only a profession. Architecture remains at an intellectual level. For instance, for Aldo Rossi, the way of observing, analyzing, and categorizing architecture is as important as designing. I think that exhibiting architecture is more a process of revealing a certain way of looking and thinking of architectural space.” The process-centered focus underlined by Carlos Machado e Moura is the locus where digital tools can facilitate the rendering of intellectual practices in an exhibition venue. It is disentangled from the materiality of architectural reproductions, such as models, and favors a societal commentary on the reasons that led to that project, underpinned by audiovisual material, 3D reconstructions of contexts, and narratives.

The direction of new experiments at CdA includes augmented reality, virtual reality, films, and video installation. One notable example is the 2022 exhibition The Reasons Offsite on modular and prefabricated architecture. The exhibition offered a virtual experience using Oculus Rift, allowing visitors to explore and interact with models, photos, and videos in a 20 × 20 m digital room (Resta and Gonçalves 2024). On site, the venue only featured two parallel walls with text on a brief history of prefabrication and a central station with wired goggles.

Another experiment is scheduled for an exhibition in November 2025, with the title Arquitetura Política Desenhada: On Manuel Correia Fernandes. Curator Carlos Machado e Moura and Vítor Alves have studied the 60-year professional activity of Manuel Correia Fernandes, who has explored many dimensions not typically encountered in the careers of other architects. For instance, Fernandes served as the director of the Faculdade de Arquitetura do Porto, contributed to including the role of city councilor through commissions focused on the urban regeneration of Porto (i.e., the plan for Porto 2001 and the construction of Casa da Musica), was an author in printed media, where he popularized architectural debates, and participated in associative and cooperative projects. This complex biography cannot be explained only through the projects Manuel Correia Fernandes designed. All dimensions pertain to architecture, but do not translate directly into architectural buildings. In this view, the curator thinks that “rather than bringing original materials and models, as we would do if we were treating his body of work in terms of architectural projects, we obviously need to work with oral history, documents that we would like people to be able to touch, to consult, to even turn, to write on.” It is a digital exhibition in the sense that it does not use originals but rather digital reproductions, besides videos, in order to convey the complexity of the process of thinking, programming, and discussing architecture. The exhibition does not require VR or AR to represent buildings; instead, it documents public debates that decided the future of the city. From this standpoint, architecture is seen as a form of drawn politics, thus extending beyond the realm of architectural professionalism.

Digital tools serve a vital role in engaging various audiences that extend beyond traditional professional circles. They have the ability to reach out to non-architects by utilizing interdisciplinary content that resonates with a wider demographic. This approach allows individuals with different backgrounds and interests to connect with architecture, transforming their understanding and appreciation of the discipline. Architecture centers can play a role in this process by offering immersive environments. Unlike traditional methods that rely heavily on technical drawings, digital tools engage senses and emotions, moving beyond the confines of abstract representation. This allows individuals, regardless of their professional expertise, to explore and understand architectural concepts in a more relatable way. But also by way of “expanding the field and revealing the processes of construction of architecture and the perception of architecture as the problematization of social problems in a given space. These tools can be, and we are likely going to see them more often,” Carlos Machado e Moura adds. Ultimately, this engagement not only enhances public appreciation for architecture but also encourages a broader conversation about its role and impact in society.

7. Conclusions

In the final question on the future of architecture museums, various ideas surfaced among the interviewees. Some advocate for the inclusion of additional facilities, such as a prototyping workshop for digital experimentation. Others emphasize the need for a stronger voice of architects in political debates, especially regarding strategic decisions that shape the future of cities. CdA has shown vitality and initiative to act as a national and international cultural actor.

In summary, we have seen that the digital museum stands in a liminal process, position, and place that accompanies the transition of collections to a virtual domain. Printed documents and digital material are able to express more than models, which occupy large spaces in the archives, as discussed with the interviewees on the curatorial directions at CdA. In turn, archival acquisitions reflect this strategic shift by prioritizing digitization and native digital formats over hand drawings and maquettes. In the future, this idea of obtaining the originals will likely be more selective for the sustainability of the archival process, facilitating the conservation of the collection. It is now potentially easier to obtain materials from architectural offices, but CdA needed an ad hoc commission to select only a very limited number of items.

With the development of digital outputs, the aura of the original is fading away while shifting the attention to the curatorial activity that can construct multiple narrations on the archive collections. Instead of concentrating solely on monographic exhibitions featuring individual architects, digital outputs enable curatorial teams to integrate architectural issues into the broader cultural context. This approach aligns with the speculative dimensions outlined by Watson (2021), which suggest that architecture can exist independently of physical buildings. The more architecture is understood not as a production of buildings but as a disciplinary look at problems, the wider the potential domain of action that the architecture center can explore. By viewing architecture as a process rather than just an object, we can explore alternative methods for conveying this information, particularly through digital means.

A clear path for these institutions is set for the production of original audiovisual content. Films have entered the realm of architectural exhibitions by the means of actually allowing us to perceive architectural space through time and motion. We can see how architecture can change dramatically throughout the day or under different conditions, something that drawings or models do not communicate. Also, films can convey captivating narratives, as demonstrated by the well-known duo of filmmakers Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, who have been creating spatial narratives for the past twenty years.

Finally, we suggest looking at the digital manifestations of collections from the perspective of liminal studies that better interpret the moments of transition from one domain to another. In this case, architecture centers sit between organizational processes (archive/museum), positions (openness/preservation), and places (physical/virtual). The field in between is then three-dimensional, establishing a hybrid institution, part archive and part museum, as CdA is. While architecture centers enjoy a degree of flexibility, this must be balanced against much larger cultural entities. Nonetheless, CdA and similar institutions could be ideal settings for pilot projects connected to the digital museum paradigm.

What is liminal, in Van Gennep’s sense, is inherently temporary, and will cease to exist when the post-liminal condition is reached. However, architecture centers depart from certain structural conditions addressed in the text (i.e., the impossibility of exhibiting the original that is out there in the city), which leads to an indirect, mediated relationship between the visitor and the architectural work. Liminality starts to look like a long-term horizon, almost permanent (Johnsen and Sørensen 2015), to be navigated with flexible decision-making. For instance, we saw that the acquisition of the core collection comes with economic and political issues when organizations and their stakeholders interact.

The archive faces a challenge in balancing the need to grow and diversify its collection with the constraints of space and budget. The donation of digital items has added complexity to this process, introducing new vulnerabilities that traditional archives typically do not encounter. These vulnerabilities include cyber attacks, format obsolescence, copyright protection issues, and the need for specialized reproduction hardware, among others. CdA has designed an online platform called edifício digital, which encapsulates the various venues of interaction with the archive. The final stage of exhibitions is, in turn, linked with archival acquisitions so that each curatorial work also serves the purpose of archival acquisitions. The digital facilitates a renewed attention on architecture from a cultural perspective, complementing the traditional drawing-and-model formula with oral history, media representations, contextualization, and interviews. Additional experimentations, instead, project the entire curatorial project in a virtual environment and duplicate the physical presence of the museum with a parallel digital twin.

All three examined dimensions reveal the typical weaknesses of liminals’ identity oscillations. In a state of limbo, as is explained in the theoretical framework, their paradoxical position of being unable to consolidate their status may generate confusion for visitors or users. A long-term analysis of CdA’s digital strategy is needed to assess the durability of the tools implemented, their impact on physical visits, the perception of the institutional identity, and the engagement with virtual users. Another limitation of this study is the focus on one case study. Future research could involve a comparison between Casa da Arquitectura, the case examined in this text, and other comparable hybrid institutions that attempt to emerge as cultural actors in the dissemination of architecture.