Portugal - Head Office and Garden of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Head Office and Garden complex opened to the public in 1969. Four decades later, it was classified as the first Portuguese modern National Monument [Decree no. 18/2010, Official Gazette, 1st series, no. 250, of 28-12-2010]. It is a masterpiece of modern architecture and an example of a perfect relationship between interior and exterior landscapes. Responding to an ambitious and complex programme of cultural facilities integrating a varied set of needs, its social and cultural impact helped establish the Foundation’s reputation of prestige and innovation. The complex embodies the physical materialisation of the intangible heritage represented by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as a private philanthropic institution, established on 18 July 1956, which was a fundamental enabler of the democratisation of Portuguese society. The panel Começar (Beginning), by Almada Negreiros, a Portuguese modernist artist, in the atrium of the main building, appears as an inaugural symbol of the Foundation and its building, with an obvious institutional and symbolic connotation. Its importance indicates the fundamental physical public presence that the Foundation has assumed in Portugal and abroad, promoting both a reencounter with the Portuguese identity and the modernisation of Portuguese life at different levels, from education to health, from culture to science. Reinforcing an active citizenship, the Foundation, in conjunction with its Head Office, carried out intensive public activity in the democratisation of what was, at that time, a country not just closed to the world but also censured by a retrograde dictatorship. Its long history of grantmaking and direct intervention, both discreet and resounding, generous and democratic, promoted development, literacy and citizenship in the country in a way that few private institutions have managed to do, either at national or international level. The generous gesture by the founder of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation came to have a huge impact on the country. The Foundation undeniably made a contribution to the change that began to take place in Portugal from the 1960s on, especially in the areas of education, the arts, science and health.