SHOPYARD

16 experiments
for shopping centres in transition

Shopping Santa Cruz
8 to 23 de November
10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.*
free entrance

8 November 
6:00 p.m. Shopyard Assembly (Theatro Circo)
5:00 p.m. Opening 
(Shopping Santa Cruz)

Curators: Space Transcribers



The first-generation shopping centres emerged in the second half of the 20th century, accompanying the socioeconomic and urban transformations that followed the 1974 Carnation Revolution. Modern and central, they mirrored a country in transition, aligned with new international models of consumption developed in the post-war period. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, dozens of these buildings were constructed in Braga, leaving a profound mark on the city centre. However, over time, with the expansion of large retail complexes, changes in consumer habits, and the growth of online commerce, many of these shopping centres lost their vitality.

Today, in the centre of Braga, more than twenty of these spaces still remain, many in a state of partial abandonment, fragmented and lacking a common strategy. Yet they persist. Affordable rents attract small businesses, associations, and informal cultural practices. They are hybrid spaces — marginal, yet alive — where uses, memories, and communities endure. It is in this context that Shopyard is born, a project curated by Space Transcribers for Braga 25 Portuguese Capital of Culture, which seeks to recentre these buildings within the contemporary urban and artistic debate.

Located in shop 33 of Shopping Santa Cruz and featuring a rehabilitation project by the architecture studio oitoo, Shopyard operated for a year as a continuous testing ground. Between November 2024 and November 2025, it hosted guided tours, assemblies, workshops, artistic residencies, and an architecture Summer School, involving a wide network of participants — from artists and architects to shopkeepers and local residents.

This exhibition brings together the sixteen works developed throughout this process, spread across the various floors of the shopping centre and organised into three sections: workshops, featuring eight collective works created with the local community; artistic residencies, comprising five critical interventions selected from an open call; and a Summer School, which brought together thirty architecture students from seventeen nationalities and three European architecture studios to imagine possible futures for three of the city’s shopping centres — Shopping Santa Cruz and the Galécia and Santa Bárbara centres.

With these proposals, Shopyard sought to activate a political, social, and architectural debate around buildings forgotten within the dominant urban discourse, working with their flaws and potential to imagine new uses and relationships with the city.


CREDITS

Curators

Space Transcribers (Daniel Duarte Pereira and Fernando P. Ferreira)

Authors and collectives

Ana Areias, Artristas, Bureau, Colectiva Ta Ta колекти, Coletivo P22, Coletivo Kindergarten, Gonçalo Araújo, Inês Barros, Maria João Petrucci, Marisa Fernandes, Miguel De, Mónica Faria, Oitoo, Ouest Architecture, Pedro Augusto, Svenja Tiger.

Exhibition design

Francisco Costa

Production

Felícia Teixeira

Exhibition graphic design

United by

Content editing and proofreading

Marta Sofia Silva

Installation and technical assistance

Francisco Antão

Promoter

Faz Cultura – Empresa Municipal de Cultura

Município de Braga