General Coordinator: Prof. Doutor João Soares

(Department of Architecture, University of Évora)

2009-2018

Architectural and landscape culture in the Mediterranean area and India

This research area comes about in the wake of a project that has been running for some time (POCTI/AUR/42147/2001), with the current aim of giving greater relevance to certain aspects of architectural and landscape culture and of providing a basis for work on joint master’s dissertations. Priority is given to the continuation of research into the Medina at Marrakesh, with field work in partnership with local teams and the subsequent writing up of studies for publication, which together with other geographical studies constitute a plural, speculative reading that enable properly-grounded and innovative architectural interventions. New dynamic of relations between Portugal and the Arab world, especially the Maghreb. Comparative study with other urban centres and analysis of the evolution and changes in architecture through a comparison that takes into account religious, morphological and climatic bases and their traditions, both architectural and historical.

Point Zero of Architecture

Promotion of the debate of architectural needs for developing countries and regions of the world and for those that are in situations of environmental or humanitarian emergency. A probably decisive part of the future of architecture as an area of knowledge and of cultural output pertinent to life on the planet and for those that inhabit it is in the architectural practice in progress in the developing countries and regions. This is not just concerned with the ‘old’ problems of development – problems of basic sanitation, infrastructures, habitation essential equipment – but also with the ‘new’ problems of megacities where are to be found all degrees of development, of the explosion of global tourism, of the reuse of the historical built and natural heritages. The commitment of architecture and of the project in the face of the natural, environmental and political-military catastrophes that mark our age. Architects, landscapers, urban planners, geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, historians interested in the culture of architecture, can all seek in architectural culture for development and emergency a practice at the service of humanity on Earth. Portugal has a number of advantages in setting up a course of this kind, as a developing country but also already a member of the European Union, because Portuguese architectural culture has a certain influence in international architectural circles and because of the historical and cultural relations that Portugal maintains with a range of developing countries, some of which are of considerable global importance for the present and the future. Lastly, the Portuguese Government has given clear indications and taken concrete steps to establish stronger economic and cultural ties between Portugal and certain Maghreb countries, creating a context that favours a field of research based on documental study of the constructed heritage and on the archives of the Portuguese heritage in the territories to which it expanded. Against this backcloth, architecture is being re-founded, it is at ‘point zero’. It is a matter of helping to detach architectural culture from the programmes of a Western culture exportable everywhere and rethinking its relationship with development, the environment and history.

Biography of a Territory

This research area arises from the project which has been submitted to the FCT for evaluation: PTDC/AUR/64981/2006. “Biography of a Territory”, with the scope extended to include the Algarve, as a place that has undergone important social changes and is a fertile case for approaching questions of identifying landscape. The area of research is situated in a space among the domains of questions related to land and landscape and to their meaning, the cultural dimension of landscape. In its broadest sense, the object of study is land which, in its physical and cultural dimension, creates a third dimension/entity – that of landscape. Any attempt at a possible concretization should envisage a historical approach (relating to the past) and also an operational approach (related to the future). It is from this dialectic that may emerge a reading of what is permanent, replaced, updated or hybrid. Attention is focused on these dynamics, with a view to seeking to delineate interpretations and even to risk the possibility of intervention. To try out different forms of ‘development’ (in the photographic sense) of this interpretative device of the territory, we propose applying it to a specific place. In this place will be ‘separated’ from its present state both presences and vestiges of social dynamics – economic and cultural, which exist or have persisted impregnated in architectural artefacts, in the characteristics of elements of the landscape, signs and forms of occupation, manipulation and construction of the territory. Thus, we set out in search of places where situations of change of use and consequent physical metamorphosis are perceptible or foreseeable. In characterizing a cultural landscape, we will also choose the field of research of the study and the transformative evolution of natural materials that have characterized construction and the place. For example the stone, its historical root and its constant formal mutation. In this field particular attention will be paid to partnerships with companies and technological centres that work in this domain.

Historiography of Computation. The pioneering position of Leslie Martin and the counterpart in Portugal.

Parting essentially from the work undertaken by Leslie Martin and Lionel March at Cambridge, UK, during the 1950s, through the foundation of the Land Use and Built Form Studies Centre (LUBFS), this project seeks to analyse the influence of this work on the theories of architecture in Portugal and how and where computational techniques related to architecture were implemented. The research work involves consultation of the Leslie Martin archive in London, as well as the LNEC archive. Case studies like the project of Álvaro Siza and of the headquarters of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation through the work of Luís de Guimarães Lobato are pertinent case studies that will constitute starting points for the research. Among the principal objectives is the aim of researching and publicizing a field of research as yet little explored in architectural studies in Portugal and to contribute to building up knowledge in this area.

2018

It addresses architecture as a specific mode of contemporary culture in the following areas: Methodological – the project essay as a means of reflection and research development; Territorial and landscape – as a founding context of human activities; Conservation of built heritage in its different expressions – erudite and vernacular; urban; infrastructural and industrial; Constructive – related to technical knowledge and cultural formation; From the perception of the use of spaces, places and territories; Criticism through work on the media and debate Architecture – exhibitions, publications and laboratories as necessary means for the organization of research groups.