Ian Kiaer awarded Philip Leverhulme Prize
Kiaer will develop research on the Monsanto restaurant in Lisbon
2018

Courtesy: © Ian Kiaer
Ian Kiaer has been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize 2018.
Over the next two years, Ian is looking to develop a body of research and artwork centred on and drawing from the brutalist structure of the panoramic restaurant of Monsanto in Lisbon. Designed by Chaves de Costa, it is a building that has moved from a model of luxury during the Estado Novo dictatorship, to its present site of ruin put to alternative uses including raves, a platform for graffiti and parkour. As an iconic site overlooking the city, it has become a source of anxiety for politicians and town planners who are caught between recognising the significance of the building’s history and an impulse for gentrification. Through the course of the research he will ask how the building might introduce different notions of the model, as utopian proposition, site of ruin and possible contemporary monument.
Every year the Philip Leverhulme prize scheme makes up to thirty awards of £100,000, across a range of academic disciplines. For the 2018 competition the selected subject areas were: Classics; Earth Sciences; Physics; Politics and International Relations; Psychology; and Visual and Performing Arts.