SI Fernando Távora | Fundação Instituto Marques da Silva

In April 2011 the Marques da Silva Foundation formalized the reception, for the purposes of handling, study and dissemination, of the important and diverse collection of documents belonging to the Architect and Professor Fernando Távora (1923-2005).

Incorporated into the FIMS Documentation and Research Centre for Architectural Culture, this collection consists of the entire professional archive, whose written records, working drawings, photographs and models offer extensive documentation of the architect´s creative activities, developed between 1946 and 2002, involving around 300 project designs and related work.

The collection also includes a substantial library of approximately 3800 titles, with reference works in the fields of Architecture and the History of Art and Culture. Highlights include a set of books from the Rogério de Azevedo collection, treatises on architecture, a wide-ranging collection of books by masters of modernism such as Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, as well as books which reflect Fernando Távora´s interests, affections, and memories of travel and participation in international conferences, or even documenting his practice as a teacher and supervisor, translated into numerous theses and dissertations.

In order to house and safeguard the collection, FIMS has undertaken partial renovation of the Lopes Martins mansion and carried out a definitive cataloguing process, with a view to its evaluation and availability for consultation and research.

Between the end of 2017 and April 2018, the Institution´s stock has been expanded, with the incorporation of new sets of documents and, in particular, bibliographical material. The collection brought together by the Architect Fernando Távora relating to Fernando Pessoa and the Orpheus Generation has come to join the existing and already treated collection, with records which date from 1905 to 1964. It includes an impressive number of manuscripts and typescripts written by Fernando Pessoa, Mário Sá Carneiro, Alfredo Guisado and Ronald de Carvalho, among other names, a highlight also being the set of documents coming originally from the personal collection of Raúl Leal, most of them still unpublished. Also incorporated into this archive are the art books belonging to Maria Luísa Távora, as well as books on a range of subjects, such as history, philosophy and architecture, still remaining in the Casa da Senhora da Luz. In total, 3044 items of description have been referenced, increasing in a second phase by another 70 items relating to monographs, periodicals and pamphlets, and 4 VHS cassettes, on themes in Portuguese architecture. In terms of documents, another 81 newly described items have been referenced, relating to correspondence, documentation of works, drawings and various documents, produced between the 1930s and 2003.

(translated by Gill Stoker)

See bibliographical catalogue
See documents on line

See Architectural Map Fernando Távora (2016): [Pt/Eng] - [Fr/Esp]
2.ª edition (2020): [PT/Eng] e [FR/Esp]

Architectural Map-Guide presentation, by Jorge Figueira

See text by Sergio Fernandez about Fernando Távora´s travel sketches

See Dossier Premium with all the videos of "Distinguished Figure, University of Porto - 2013: Fernando Távora"

See Observador article, Fernando Távora, the architect who met Pessoa ahead of time, on the subject of the inclusion of the Pessoa collection

Archive in process of being installed (2012)