Rui Goes Ferreira Information System
Rui Goes Ferreira in his architectural studio, n.d., unattributed photograph
"His architectural work, still little known, represents the pursuit of design, the continuous clearing of the traces over time, in adapting to constantly changing design situations. Following in the footsteps of Rui Goes Ferreira is a disconcerting experience of humanity, of limits, of insatiable searching, of dreams and of utopia."
Duarte Belo
Rui Goes Ferreira was born in Funchal on 8 November 1926. He graduated in architecture in Porto, the city where he attended the School of Fine Arts and began practising Architecture as an intern in Januário Godinho´s studio. He returned to Madeira in 1955, developing there an intense and varied business as a liberal professional, teacher and energiser of cultural projects. It was in the land of his birth that his work would achieve full expression. Attentive to the place, to its urban and landscape context, his designs were in line with the model principles of modern training, but sensitive to the concerns and needs of a community with its own special character.
Precursor of modern architecture in the Madeira archipelago, Rui Goes Ferreira, along with Raúl Chorão Ramalho, manifested different fields of activity and interest: Architecture, Urbanism, Art and Society. Through his workshop passed names such as Manuel Vicente, Marcelo Costa, José António Paradela, José Zúquete and António Marques Miguel. Of the finished work, highlights are the work completed in Funchal of Social Housing for the Federation of Welfare Funds, in collaboration with Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, several designs for individual and collective housing units such as the Fishermen´s Quarter in Câmara de Lobos, the arrangement and proposal for the construction of a shelter for the Pico do Areeiro viewing point, the monitoring of the Master Plan for the City of Funchal, coordinated by José Rafael Botelho, and the cultural project for the TEMPO Decorative Arts Gallery, developed with the sculptor Amândio Sousa.
Two of his works, The Boaventura People´s House in São Vicente, a building which combines in an exemplary fashion the local conditions of the Island of Madeira with the modern style, and the Madeira Beer Company Factory, a design that achieves the rarity of bringing urbanity to an eminently industrial programme, were recently proposed for Classification as Sites of Public Interest.
In 2018, his work was the subject of the exhibition “Rui Goes Ferreira. Image of an interrupted work”, curated by Madalena Vidigal, the architect´s granddaughter, with photographs by Duarte Belo. In the masters dissertation which she dedicated to the work of her grandfather, Madalena Vidigal states that Goes Ferreira "took to Madeira the reflection of the architect´s social role. A work made by man, for the man who uses the landscape and the place as cultural data to be integrated into the final structure, humanising architecture and designing it on a natural scale".
The recent transfer of the estate of this architect, who died prematurely in 1978, to the Marques da Silva Foundation, will enable new approaches to his legacy, creating a favourable environment for promoting the knowledge and study of an architecture which still today marks the land where it was built. This is the documentary record of the work developed in Rui Goes Ferreira´ s studio over more than 20 years of activity, evidenced in around 90 designs which are now available for research.
(Translated by Gill Stoker)
See:
FIMS Digital Archive
About this Architect:
Madalena Vidigal,“Rui Goes Ferreira: “Rui Goes Ferreira: Ensaios sobre uma obra interrompida. Madeira 1956-1978” [Essays on an interrupted work. Madeira 1956-1978”], Masters Dissertation, Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, 2016.
Exhibition RUI GOES FERREIRA.Imagem de uma obra interrompida [RUI GOES FERREIRA.Image of an interrupted work] (Porta 33, Funchal, 2018)
