With 14 titles and the S. Bento Station Puzzle, available in the University of Porto (U. Porto Press, nº 33) pavilion with generous discounts, the Marques da Silva Foundation is taking part in the Book Fair that begins today in the Gardens of Crystal Palace.
 
With the motto "Joy for the end of the world", this seventh´ Porto Book Fair will have 80 exhibitors. Among publishers, booksellers, secondhand book sellers and other organisations, spread across 119 pavilions, there will be book launches, lectures, debates, workshops, and various presentations and concerts. In the U.Porto Press Pavilion autograph sessions will also be organised, and the competition "You must be lucky!" (+ info).
 
The Book Fair will remain open until 13 September and can be visited from Monday to Thursday, between 1200 hrs and 2130 hrs. On Fridays, the timetable extends to 2300 hrs. At the weekend it opens at 1100 hrs. On Saturdays it closes at 2300 hrs, while on Sundays it closes at 2130 hrs.
 

"... memories, realities and dreams intersect, the past and the future, facts, places, images, ideas and forms, people, travels and readings, thus building the life and work of a man and of an architect."*
Fernando Távora, born 25 August 1923.

* in Fernando Távora: Percurso [Trail], CCB, 1993, p.9; drawing: Beirut, National Museum, June, 60.

It could be a simple record of an ordinary meeting of friends, but it is much more than this photograph reveals to us. Suffice to say that the year was 1952, and that in front of the main entrance to the castle of Blois are Joseph Martin from Canada, Manuel Marques from Aguiar, Portugal, and Amine Bezeri from Lebanon. What unites them is that they are architects, attending a meeting of the Paris Institute of Urbanism.

Today we are celebrating World Photography Day.

It´s with the poetry of Octávio Lixa Filgueiras that the first series of Selected Writings comes to an end. With this programme, the 15th, we also mark the passage of one more birthday for this architect, born on 16 August 1922.

Selected Writings will return in September.

Listen  here

The exhibition "The Character of Tradition in the Architecture of Barney, Távora, Coderch" is one of the 13 projects selected in the "Disclosure" category in the Architecture and Urbanism Colombian Biennial 2020.

Curated by Andrés Erazo (Colombia), Manuel Mendes (Portugal) and António Armesto (Spain), the exhibition, supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation, was open to the public at the La Tertulia Museum, in Cali, between May and August 2019.

The 27th Biennial has 9 categories and a total of 118 registrations. It will take place between 18 and 28 November and from among the winners of each of these categories the National Architecture Prize will be awarded.

+ info: Sociedad Colombiana de Arquitectos.org

OASRN, in partnership with the Marques da Silva Foundation, has just launched the second edition, revised and extended, of the José Marques da Silva Architecture Map (pt/eng e es/fr), and the second revised edition of the Fernando Távora (pt/eng e es/fr).

Within this series of publications, the Marques da Silva Foundation also worked with OASRN and the architect Helena Ricca on the production of the new Agostinho Ricca Architecture Map (pt/eng e es/fr). With introductory text by João Luís Marques, it covers 49 representative works of value and diversity, created by this architect during 70 years of professional practice.

In this context, OASRN has also republished the first map to be produced, in 2008, the Arménio Losa and Cassiano Barbosa Architecture Map (pt/eng e es/fr). Completing the collection are the Architecture Maps dedicated to  Álvaro Siza (pt- eng - es) an Eduardo Souto de Moura (pt - eng - es).

+ info: oasrn.org

The deadline for submitting applications for the 16th Fernando Távora Prize has been extended to 31 August 2020. This decision has been taken due to the extraordinary epidemiological situation we are currently experiencing.

+info:  fims | oasrn

Harry Wolf, an architect with a long and award-winning career in the United States of America, residing in Porto for the past 5 years, brings us back to the architecture of Mies van der Rohe.

This is the 12th "Word-of-Mouth: let´s talk about architecture"*, a podcast which returns in September with some new and unexpected guests.

+ info
*  In error, the Neue Museum Galerie is mentioned, when it should be the Neue National Galerie. The recording will be corrected in September.

Work continues on the treatment of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira´s collection and surprises are emerging. Originals have already been found that were thought to have been lost, from his academic work at the Porto School of Fine Arts, from Finland and the United States, as well as the sketches for the 1983 Bastille Opera Competition in Paris, to which the picture relates.

+ info

This week, the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Casa Comum are making available two more podcasts: in "Selected Writings" the scattered writings of Fernando Lanhas will be read; in "Word-of-Mouth: let´s talk about architecture", Carlos Antunes offers us a journey through architectures without architects, from nests.

+ info

While the opening to the public of "Siza - Inédito e Desconhecido/Siza - Unseen & Unknown" at the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier is pending, the Catalogue of the exhibition presented in Berlin, at the Tchoban Foundation: Museum fur Architekturzeichung, in 2019, curated by Kristin Feireiss and António Choupina, can already be ordered through the Marques da Silva Foundation online store.

The publication reproduces the set of 100 designs then exhibited, framed by texts by the curators, by Álvaro Siza, Álvaro Leite Siza, José Luís Porfírio and Steven Holl. They are designs which give us an intimate look at the work of this architect, alongside drawings never before seen in public, by his late wife, Maria Antónia Siza, drawings by his son and architect Álvaro Leite Siza and by his grandson, Henrique Siza. 

Go to online store

The building which Bartolomeu Costa Cabral imagined for the Praça Martim Moniz, in Lisbon, “begun in 1973, developed until 1975, postponed until 1981 and only then partially built (…) sought to give back to the Moorish Quarter new spaces of encounter and appropriation”.

The article by Mariana de Oliveira Couto, contributor to the Marques da Silva Foundation and with a doctorate from DArq UC with a thesis on the work of Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, published in ProArq (no.34), introduces us to this project. Read here
 

This is the title of the feature article written by Andreia Friaças for the Jornal Público about women´ s presence in architecture, and what has been done to make that presence visible. A story of affirmation in which Maria José Marques da Silva, the first woman to complete the architecture course in Porto, in 1943, is one of the protagonists.

Link to Jornal Publico

Through the voice of Andreia Garcia, the new "Word-of-Mouth: let´s talk about Architecture" tells us about the Chapel that Barragán designed for the Capuchin Poor Clares in Tlalpan, Mexico City.

Listen here
+ info

 

There is another item in Selected Writings. The 13th podcast in this series brings us fragments from José Porto´ s specification for Porto Coliseum´ s preliminary plan, dated February 2020.

Listen  here
+ Info

 

The treatment work of the architect Raúl Hestnes Ferreira´ s collection continues to progress, and every week dozens of rolls of sketches and design drawings are opened, separated, cleaned and repackaged. So far, about 4000 items have been processed. See video here.

On 1 July 1988, at the age of 79, Arménio Losa died. In this "Selected Writings", for which we thank the Architect Álvaro Siza, we are able to recover the texts then published in his honour in the Jornal de Notícias. There are four testimonials, four ways of remembering an architect who for Álvaro Siza was constantly contemporary, for Alcino Soutinho a reference for his civic defence of Architecture, for Jorge Gigante a gap which is difficult to fill, and for Fernando Távora a lesson in hope.

The picture which accompanies this item was kindly supplied by FAUP´s Documentation Centre. In it can be seen "Soutinho, Semide, Aires Pereira, Távora, Siza, Marques de Aguiar, Forjaz, Sergio, Pedro and Losa" [FAUP/CDUA/AL-CB/PART/Fotos_503_1]

#12 Selected Writings - Arménio Losa

+ info

Yesterday, 30 June, the protocol was signed which formalises the donation of the collection of Francisco Granja (1914-1988) to the Marques da Silva Foundation. There are hundreds of design records (drawings and texts), photographs and magazines of architecture and urbanism to document the career of an architect who was a disciple of Marques da Silva. Of the many designs, highlights are the CineTeatro Vale Formoso and the Peugeot Garage in Porto, works exhibited in the 1953 Exhibition, and the group of residential buildings in the Rua António José da Costa, also in Porto. The donated documentation is already undergoing archival treatment, conservation and restoration, with a view to its future availability.

In yesterday´s signing, the culmination of a process initiated by Clara Pimenta do Vale and César Romão, were present, for the Foundation, the President, Fátima Vieira, and the Vice-President, Luís Urbano, and for Francisco Granja´s family, Maria Júlia Granja and Helena Pato Granja, wife and daughter of the architect.

The Activities and Management Report for the year 2019 is now available for viewing.

See  Report

On S. João´s Day, here is the popular rhyme, showing that so much can be said about architecture through it. Of course we are talking about José Gigante, who invites us to visit the "Corbusier Route". But we also have the Neues Museum, by Chipperfield, through the voice of João Mendes Ribeiro, and a related figure to these two guests in Word-of-Mouth, Fernando Távora, with the story of the romance of the Casa da Covilhã.

Word-of-Mouth: let´ s talk about architecture | #8 José Gigante and #9 João Mendes Ribeiro
Selected Writings | #11 Fernando Távora
 

+ info

To mark the passage of another year since the birth of João Queiroz, the Marques da Silva Foundation is publishing a set of photographs of the Santo António chapel in S. João da Madeira, designed by this architect. Opened in 1935, it was built on the basis of a public subscription involving more than 150 benefactors. Clara Vale, photographer of these images, highlights the contrast between two worlds: the inner and the outer. In the interior she highlights the holy water containers, the corbels supporting the roof and, in particular, the spiral staircase, in the shape of a snail, made of reinforced concrete. This researcher also considers that it is hypothetically possible to attribute the authorship of the Art Deco stained glass designs to João Queiroz. The chapel has been undergoing some work and is now awaiting the installation of a new altar.
 

See photographic album
 

+ info

The Marques da Silva Foundation has a wide-ranging treatment project underway of the architect Raúl Hestnes Ferreira´s collection. There are thousands of records which will be cleaned and reconditioned. It is a fundamental step in allowing new actions to be developed, ensuring the safeguarding of the original documentation.

See pictures of the process: álbum and vídeo
 
+ info

The archives of the architects Octávio Lixa Filgueiras (1922-1996) and Manuel Teles (1936-2012) can already be consulted in the Marques da Silva Foundation´s Digital Archive, as well as the respective lists of architecture/urbanism working processes. Altogether, they relate to more than 1600 drawings and 11 linear metres of written items that have been treated archivally and which document both the academic training as well as the professional activity of these architects and teachers.
The collections now available also include important photographic and bibliographical records. Octávio Lixa Filgueiras´ s library, with a total of 1377 books which cover areas as diverse as architecture, urbanism, history, art and heritage, is also already inventoried and is beginning to become available for consultation on the Aleph platform, where the Marques da Silva Foundation´s catalogue is held.
With the integration of the Octávio Lixa Filgueiras and Manuel Teles entries, the Marques da Silva Foundation´ s Digital Archive now provides access to the documentation of 16 architectural collections. It is an open process, so that the information incorporated on this platform is being progressively expanded.

See
Octávio Lixa Filgueiras: Digital Archive and Website
Manuel Teles: Digital Archive and Website

Here are 3 new Marques da Silva Foundation podcasts to listen to!

In "Passa-a-Palavra: Falemos de Arquitetura" ["Word-of-Mouth: Let´s Talk about Architecture"], Nuno Valentim brings us to Casa Barragan. It is a house where client and architect merge, so "Escritos Escolhidos" ["Selected Writings"] proposes to hear what another architect has to say about the house which he designed for himself. We are referring to Sergio Fernandez and the Vill´Alcina. For what will already be the 10th issue of "Selected Writings", we return to Siza with the reading of two texts: Barragán and António Quadros.

+ info: here

The submission period for the 16th edition of the Fernando Távora Prize is now open, an initiative organised by OASRN and which, as of this edition, has the Marques da Silva Foundation as a partner organisation.

Applications should be submitted by 17 August and the jury will be made up of the journalist Paula Moura Pinheiro, the architects Paula Silva, José Bernardo Távora (appointed by FIMS) and Eduardo Queiroga (representing OASRN), and also Dr Maria da Graça de Tavares and Távora Pereira Coutinho (designated by the family of the Architect Fernando Távora).

+ info

Conference/webinar
WHAT EDUCATION? Architecture, Teaching and Research
Presenters: Jorge Figueira, Gonçalo Canto Moniz, Luís Urbano
Speakers: Bruno Gil, Carolina Coelho, Eduardo Fernandes, Gonçalo Canto Moniz, Leonor Matos Silva, Pedro Pinto, Raquel Paulino


The conference What Education? Architecture, Teaching and Research*, taking place in digital form with access via ZOOM, on 22 and 23 May from 10:00, will bring together the researchers of the (EU)ROPA - Rise of Portuguese Architecture project and guest researchers from “What Education”, with the purpose of discussing publicly the first results of the research announced last July at the Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier. The aim is to identify, for each case study, the most relevant subjects and the key moments in the training of the architect. Simultaneously, the challenges created by the research will be presented, in line with the developments of “What Research”.


This initiative is organised by Jorge Figueira, Gonçalo Canto Moniz, Bruno Gil, Carolina Coelho, of the Centre of Social Studies (CES-UC), in partnership with the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 

+ info:  here

*Part of the «(EU)ROPA - Rise of Portuguese Architecture» research project, funded by FEDER - European Regional Development Fund via COMPETE 2020 - Competitiveness and Internationalisation Programme (POCI) and Portuguese funding via FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology.  POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 030492.

While we wait for the moment when the doors of the Marques da Silva Foundation will reopen without restrictions, we are marking International Museum Day with a digital initiative: a look at the restoration process of the drawings made during José Marques da Silva´ s training in Paris, between 1890 and 1896, while a student at the School of Fine Arts and a young apprentice architect in Victor Laloux´ s workshop.

We are referring to 68 architectural drawings, 10 drawings of models and ornaments, 44 statements and 2 descriptive memoranda - today an integral part of the Marques da Silva Foundation´ s collection - which were the subject of an extensive and meticulous process of restoration, mostly carried out by Ana Freitas of the Conservation and Restoration of Graphic Documents Workshop of the University of Porto, as illustrated in this video.

+ info: here or go to the video:  From Paris to Porto: the restoration of Marques da Silva´ s drawings from the Laloux workshop

In "Passa-a-Palavra: falemos de arquitetura" ["Word-of-Mouth: let´s talk about architecture"] we will be on the scale of the small house, with Francisco Vieira de Campos talking to us about the Casa de Baião, and on the scale of the large neighbourhood, with the history of Lafayette Park, related to us by Graça Correia.

In its turn, "Escritos Escolhidos" ["Selected Writings"] offers two very personal narratives: Raúl Hestnes Ferreira tells us how his first architectural project came about, and José Carlos Loureiro reveals his passion for the Palácio do Freixo.
 
+ info here

In "Selected Writings", Álvaro Siza draws a portrait of Vittorio Gregotti and describes an engraving by Picasso; Bartolomeu Costa Cabral addresses the theme of continuity in Architecture as an essential condition for its practice.

In "Word-of-Mouth: let´ s talk about Architecture", João Pedro Serôdio responds to Pedro Ramalho´ s challenge and talks to us about the Farnsworth House, by Mies.

These are the three new Marques da Silva Foundation podcasts.

On International Dance Day, a watercolour drawing by José Porto, made in Paris in the 1920s.
 

(...) the architect, in order to realise himself, has to know how to do it and, at the same time, to know things, and people, and the world, and life, and from all this, to know how to learn a lesson that allows him to raise up, at dawn, a hymn of hope for the new day.

Octávio Lixa Filgueiras, The Architect´ s Social Function, 1985, p.16

 
 

Da função social do arquitecto: para uma teoria da responsabilidade numa época de encruzilhada [The architect´s social function: towards a theory of responsibility] at a time of crossroads is a book by Octávio Lixa Filgueiras which is extensively documented at the Marques da Silva Foundation.

We know why it came about: it is the answer to one of three tests set by the School of Fine Arts to the candidates for the post of professor of Architecture, in an open competition of 1962. We know about its design and method of construction: the Foundation´s Documentation Centre preserves manuscripts, typewritten documents, montages for publication and how the illustrations of various authors were being selected and prepared for what would be the first edition. We know about the thesis which it defended: a humanist perspective which proposed the architect´ s involvement in social reality, anchored in Gordon Cullen, Ernesto Rogers and Lúcio Costa. We know about the interest it generated: in 1985 it was published by ESBAP, with a preface by Pedro Vieira de Almeida, a preface that also exists, in this collection, in a typewritten version and with notes by Octávio Lixa Filgueiras.

On World Book Day we offer it as recommended reading.

Four more Marques da Silva Foundation podcasts are already available on Casa Comum´s online platform:

"Escritos Escolhidos" ["Selected Writings"] offers two new texts: Alcino Soutinho "returns" to Italy to speak to us about its geography, its people, its cities, and Alexandre Alves Costa "returns" to Maria de Sousa, to speak to us about the scientist and the woman who recently left us.

In "Passa-a-Palavra: falemos de Arquitetura" ["Word-of-Mouth: let´ s talk about Architecture"], João Pedro Xavier extended the invitation to Nuno Brandão Costa, and Nuno Brandão Costa passed on the challenge to Pedro Ramalho. Two new testimonies which, from Barcelona, direct us towards Florence, and from Florence to Vienna.

+ info

The Marques da Silva Foundation is marking the International Day of Monuments and Sites by making available, via its Digital Archive and Institutional Website, four new Information Systems: Fernando Lanhas, Rui Goes Ferreira, Raúl Hestnes Ferreira and Bartolomeu Costa Cabral.

With the new entries, online browsing is now possible in 14 architectural document collections. A valuable research tool and a privileged way to preserve the memory of the work developed by these architects and the heritage designed by them. This is constantly ongoing work, continuously being updated, ensuring that this shared heritage becomes accessible to all.

+ info here

Manuel Teles was not only the architect who designed the Bairro do Aleixo. He graduated in Architecture from the Porto School of Fine Arts (CODA: “Housing Complex in Rural Setting”, 1965). He started his working life in João Andresen´s workshop, and collaborated with several Municipalities: Porto, Mira, Cantanhede and Barcelos, but eventually developed a long career as a liberal architect and as a teacher. He has published articles in specialist magazines and has represented Portugal in several international forums.
He was born on 16 April 1936.
 

In this picture, an oil painting on wood (77x100cm) depicting the theme of Calvary, a highlight is the exuberance and intensity of colour that fills it, as well as the standard of the anatomical definition of the figures. The artist is unknown, but its dating has been estimated as the late 16th century. It was inherited from Amélia Lopes Martins, who died in 1943, and it was associated with the chapel of the Mansion in which she was then living. It has been the subject of various opinions and valuations by several people, agents active in the national art market of the time, but the architect José Marques da Silva decided to acquire the work in question, integrating it into his personal estate. It now belongs to the Marques da Silva Foundation´s Painting collection. With it we mark the date and wish you a Happy Easter.

See Catalogue of the Painting Colllection

Two new podcasts from the Marques da Silva Foundation are now available.
Today the programme "Word-of-Mouth: let´ s talk about architecture" begins, with João Pedro Xavier, which will take us to Barcelona. [listen here]
In "Selected Writings", Fernando Távora talks to us about the granite of his childhood. [listen here]

+ info here

The minutes of the Conference Education, Design and Practice - Understanding skills in a Complex World, which took place at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New York in June 2019, have just been published in AMPS Proceedings Series 17.1. Education, Design and Practice, making it possible to read two presentations based on research focusing on the Marques da Silva Foundation:

- Alexandra Saraiva, "Hestnes Ferreira between European timelessness and North American classicism", pp. 150-159.
- Raffaella Maddaluno, "Fernando Távora and the United States: travel as a teaching practice", pp.130-136.
 
It should be noted that Alexandra Saraiva, a researcher at ISCTE-IUL under a post-doctoral grant from FCT, with a doctoral thesis on the influence of Louis Kahn on Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, is contributing to the treatment process of the architect Raúl Hestnes Ferreira´ s collection at the Marques da Silva Foundation, and that Raffaella Maddaluno, under a research grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and jointly with Giovanni Leoni and Antonio Esposito, is working on the publication of a translation and critical study of Fernando Távora´ s Travel Diary to the United States and Japan in 1960.
 

Casa Comum issued the challenge and the Marques da Silva Foundation responded with two sets of podcasts: "Selected Writings" and "Word-of-Mouth: let´s talk about architecture".
 
Borrowing the title of the last book published as part of the translation of Giorgio Grassi´s written work, "Selected Writings" proposes to give voice to the words written by architects who have entrusted their archives to the Marques da Silva Foundation. It is a fact that writing, dictated by professional requirements or in response to a personal wish, is always present in the daily lives of Architects. Whether published or unpublished, they are texts which can offer another look at the person who wrote them or on the subject they are writing about. A programme which begins with the reading of an unpublished text by José Marques da Silva, from 1915, on the opening of the city´s Avenue.
 
In "Word-of-Mouth: let´s talk about architecture", the Marques da Silva Foundation invites the community of Architects to reveal the design or work which has a place of reference in their vision of the architectural world. Each one will choose who follows. The first was João Pedro Xavier, the Director of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, and the baton has already been passed on. It will soon be available and we will see who has the next word.

+ info:
Escritos Escolhidos [Selected Writings] #1 link | Arquivo Digital: documents regarding the opening of the sity´s Avenue
Casa Comum platform: Podcasts

While the rooms, in silence, await the return of applause, there stand the buildings and their memories keeping the Theatre alive. The theatre which, with the challenge of imagining its architecture, marked the career of José Marques da Silva. Not all of his designs were built, such as the 1908 proposal for the Circus Theatre in Braga, illustrated in the picture, or the Figueirense Theatre (1915). But the small Apolo Theatre of Brejoeira (1912-13) in Monção, and the centenary Theatre of S. João (1909-20) in Porto, are witness to his "performative agility", as described by Luís Soares Carneiro, who will soon publish, in the Cadernos do Centenário [Centennial Notebooks], an article on the process followed by Marques da Silva in his design for this Porto Theatre, classified in 2012 as a national monument.
 

"I know, I know
yes, I know. I know it now and have known it for a long time
yes, I know, I know that.
But I know that, and I also know the opposite.
And it is so difficult to know that and to know otherwise.
To accept that and not to despise the opposite.
Yes, I know.
I know that the earth will be five million years old
I know that life will be three million years old
I know that the “small” distance from the earth to the moon increases,
by approximately 400,000 kilometres.
I know, yes, I know,
I know
I know that I´m only 56 years old,
1.65m tall and with a step of 70 centimetres.
Yes, I know,
I know
but I also know
that the beach will be different if you steal a grain of sand
I know
that the sea will not be the same if I steal a grain of sand
I know
that the universe changes when I breathe or even when I think.
Yes, I know
I know that I come from afar and will go far
I know that I am not just here but in many places, I know
that I don´t just live as long as I live.
I know that the infinitely large is as infinite as
the infinitely small
and I know and I know more and much more
I know that I am no exception.
I know that I am like all men
- those who were born and died
- those who will be born to die.
And I know that between me and the others is an eternal and indissoluble union,
and that the others need me, as much as I need them.
And I know that knowing we are infinitely great
because we are infinitely small
is what constitutes the passion of life.
I know, yes I know.
(And it is about this life of passion that has been
mine that I will speak.
With irony, with sadness, sometimes with bitterness,
but always, always with passion.)
Years ago I thought a thought to carve on a door
that I offered, symbolically, to the house of some friends.
That thought simply thought: make of each
moment a life.
I offered the door but I didn´t carve the thought.
I carved it in my memory and try to practise it daily.
And it is that passion for the passion of life that I passionately want
to convey. For we do not live if we do not plunge
permanently and passionately into the passion of life.
I know, yes I know.
I know."

Fernando Távora, “Testimonial”, FBAUP, 21 May 1980, translated by Gill Stoker.

The Marques da Silva Foundation, taking into account the latest recommendations and resolutions of the local and national health authorities, has decided to close its facilities, with a view to reopening on 13 April. However, as from today, our team will be teleworking. We are contactable via fims@reit.up.pt, and please continue to follow us on www.fims.up.pt.

The Board of the Marques da Silva Foundation regrets to advise that, due to the imposition of contingency measures to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus, we are unable to go ahead with the Exhibitions "Siza - Unpublished and Unknown" and "More than architecture", whose opening was scheduled for 14 March 2020.

In line with the decisions to be taken by the University of Porto and the Government of Portugal, the rescheduling will be announced in due course, as well as the other planned initiatives: the opening of the exhibitions, the presentation of the design for the new Documentation Centre, and the donation ceremonies for the collections of the architects Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, Alexandre Alves Costa and Sergio Fernandez.

Today, 7 March 2020, is the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the opening of the S. João Theatre, one of the Architect José Marques da Silva´ s most important works.

A little-known drawing  (FIMS/MSMS/1844-pd0103v) created around 1915-16, relating to the final decoration of the interior of the auditorium, allows us to examine in detail the essence of the culture and spirit of Porto society at the time, in the architect´ s interpretation of it.

Three rounded arches, in three different planes, articulate and bring together three different worlds: the arch on the right (the first of the proscenium) opens onto the stage, that is, towards Art; the second, the arch on the left, the first arch of the side boxes, opens to the auditorium and to the Public; the third, the upper arch, delimiting the ceiling painting, where an image of Olympus was planned, opens upwards, to the Gods.  In the centre of the picture, still on the ceiling, above an impost which, in the corner, joins the three planes, a table is placed, with unequivocally 19th century content, where a whole cultural programme is inscribed and which brings together the circles of Public, Art and Gods: “Poetry”.  And, on the opposite side, not visible in the picture, is the correlative: “Music”.

Marques da Silva, while subscribing to that programme, did not fail to make the new building an example of modernism, where concrete and electricity were already intrinsic and essential to architecture, anticipating and promoting with his theatre what would be the dominant direction in the century that was beginning.

The José Marques da Silva Foundation maintains and conserves this drawing, just as it conserves many others relating to the now hundred-years-old S. João Theatre. As a physical version, as a digital version, and also available online, are the new rounded arches where old plans and new readings converge, making it possible to transform the documents into Exemplary Memories. And it is by evoking the union of the Arts that the Theatre summons through a drawing by the Architect who designed the building, that we mark the anniversary and congratulate the S. João National Theatre for the relevant path it has been following.

* We are grateful to Professor Luís Soares Carneiro for his support in the writing of this note.

From 14 March, the Residence-Atelier and the Mansion of the Marques da Silva Foundation open their doors to the city with a varied programme:

1430: Round table “Siza - Unseen & Unknown” and “More than Architecture”, with the exhibition curators
1600: Donation Ceremony, Collection of the Architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, with Mariana Couto
1630: Donation Ceremony, Collections of the Architects Alexandre Alves Costa and Sergio Fernandez, with Jorge Figueira
1700: Port wine tasting

Between 1000 hrs and 2000 hrs, the exhibitions on display in the Residence-Atelier and the Foundation´s Mansion can be visited free of charge.

See the Presentation Teaser

+ info

With the joint opening of the exhibitions "Siza - Unpublished and Unknown" and "More than Architecture", the Marques da Silva Foundation opens the doors of the Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier and the Mansion to the city. In addition to the display of unpublished drawings from Siza´ s personal collection is another one which reveals the heterogeneous universe of Portuguese architects´  interests.

The opening of the exhibitions is part of the commemoration programme for the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Architect José Marques da Silva, carried out in partnership with the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, taking place on 14 March, together with a range of activities which include a round table with the exhibition curators and the donation ceremony of the collections of the architects Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, Alexandre Alves Costa and Sergio Fernandez to the Marques da Silva Foundation.

+ info: Opening of the Marques da Silva Foundation to the city

The Quinta of Joanamigo, in Barca d´Alva, with the River Douro in the background, in a land marked by the strength and grandeur of the landscape, occupies a central place in the life and work of Alfredo Matos Ferreira. The house for the overseer of this Quinta would be the first project to materialise, in 1950, marking the beginning of a long career with more than 50 years of design practice documented in the Marques da Silva Foundation. The arquive of this architect, consisting of more than 2000 drawings, written documents, models, furniture and documentaries produced by him, has now been extended with the inclusion of a set of more than one hundred magazines on architecture and urbanism, both national and international, from the mid-1940s, such as "L´architecture d´aujourd´hui", to the mid-1990s, with copies of "Wettbewerbe". Magazines which allow access to his universe of readings and which are now available for consultation. Alfredo Matos Ferreira was born on 1 March 1928.

 

Taking place today, on S. Torcato´s Day and associated with the "Fair of the 27", the official ceremony for the elevation of the Sanctuary of S. Torcato to the status of Basilica. The new statute, granted by Pope Francis, recognises the importance of the service and the quality of the architecture. The current Sanctuary is the result of a long construction process, begun in 1825 and only completed in 2015. For the work that can be seen today, the result of an international network created in the 19th century, several architects contributed, including José Marques da Silva, who followed it through from 1896 to the end of his life. It would fall to Maria José Marques da Silva and David Moreira da Silva to continue the work. But that is a story which will soon be shared by the researcher João Luís Marques. For now, the Marques da Silva Foundation is joining in this event, congratulating the Brotherhood of S. Torcato for the work achieved.

"Casa São Roque: O gestor e o arquitecto [The manager and the architect]" tells the story of the transformation of the Casa São Roque into an eclectic mansion by José Marques da Silva, the architect, and António Ramos Pinto, the manager, in the early 20th century. The book, with texts by Domingos Tavares and Teresa Portela Marques, accompanied by an original photographic record by André Cepeda and archive photographs by Alberto Marçal Brandão, summarises the history of the house and its inhabitants, giving prominent coverage to the unique landscape setting that also distinguishes this space. Launched alongside the opening of the contemporary art exhibition centre, it will also be available from now in the Marques da Silva Foundation´ s online Store.

Go to FIMS online Store

An architectural sketch has the restlessness and freedom of a gesture which, through the drawing, seeks to materialise ideas and solutions. And that creative vitality is well expressed in this study by Bartolomeu Costa Cabral for a House in Taipa, built between 2004 and 2008, at Herdade dos Delgados, in Beja, destined for a couple of artists who had made a point of presenting their "wish list". The house makes use of traditional construction techniques and is a living testament to the architect´ s respect for the wishes of his clients, his sensitivity for the telluric strength of the place, his attentive awareness of the colour of the earth and the beauty of the elements. It is with the publication of this sketch of the House in Taipa, belonging to the collection recently donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation, that today, 8 February, we celebrate the birthday of Bartolomeu Costa Cabral.

In the collection of David Moreira da Silva, the architect and urbanist born on 28 January 1909, one of the founders of the Marques da Silva Foundation, some records stand out reflecting intensive activity in relation to city planning, carried out in collaboration with De Gröer, individually or together, and after 1943 with Maria José Marques da Silva. And if 1943 was the year which sealed the marriage and professional partnership of these two architects, it was also the year of delivery of the Luanda Urbanisation Plan, begun two years earlier with De Gröer, as a commission from the City Council of that Angolan city. It was intended, through a scientifically thought-out plan, to outline streets and a road network connecting to satellite cities, defining the main areas of the city and ensuring the answer to questions of hygiene and healthy coexistence, transforming it into the "most beautiful village in Angola".

A model of the ideal city, including a proposal for an Empire Square in keeping with the hierarchical logic of classical composition, which ultimately was not realised, although its echoes have been felt in later projects.

"The Ethics of Things. Bartolomeu Costa Cabral Architecture 1953-2012", the exhibition which was open to the public at the Convent of Christ in Tomar from June to September last year, now takes to Oeiras items relating to 18 designs representing the various areas in which the architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral carried out his work.

It opens tomorrow, 23 January, at 1800 hrs, in the Architecture Circle´ s premises, with the Marques da Silva Foundation represented by its President, Fátima Vieira. The exhibition will be open until 12 March, from Tuesday to Saturday, between 1400 hrs and 1900 hrs.

+ info: www.cm-oeiras.pt

Bartolomeu Costa Cabral fell in love with the relationship which Architecture has with life, taking it as the guiding thread of a long journey, with more than six decades dedicated to the exercise of design, to the Art of building. The solidity of his work, in which the experience of the Águas Livres Block takes on a matrix role, has now been distinguished with the award of the AICA/MC/Millenium BCP Prize. The jury, chaired by Ana Tostões and made up of Sandra Vieira Jurgens, Nuno Faria, Rui Mendes and Pedro Baía, highlighted the fact that his architecture is "strongly marked by an ethical attitude and by a counter-current stance based on work with a simultaneously disciplined and poetic materiality".

The Marques da Silva Foundation, the institution which is housing his professional archive, congratulates the Architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral on this award and already anticipates that it will soon be in a position to be able to contribute to the study and dissemination of his work, by making available a vast set of documents for consultation and research.

+ info

Tomorrow, 16 January, at 1800 hrs, the Faculty of Architecture opens the exhibition "Francisco Barata. Continuing to Innovate". To mark the opening, a session will take place evoking the life and work of the architect Francisco Barata (1950-2018), former FAUP director and professor, but also a member, from the very beginning, of the General Council of the Marques da Silva Foundation, the institution which he helped to set up, thinking about some of its spaces, in particular the renovation of the headquarters garden pavilion and the renovation of the Alexandre Braga building, João Almada Prize in 2014, a project developed with Nuno Valentim and José Luís Gomes.

This exhibition, organised jointly by the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto and the Department of Architecture, University of Bologna - Campus Cesena, is curated by Antonio Esposito, Andrea Ugolini and commissioned by Carla Garrido Oliveira and Mariana Sá. It will be open to the public until 19 February in the FAUP Exhibition Gallery.

+ info: www.arq.up.pt

Manuel Marques de Aguiar, born on 8 January 1927, was one of the architects and urbanists who helped to think about and design the city where we live today. Porto, which is recognisable in this drawing, was the city where he trained, lived and worked. The memory of his work will remain here.

Bartolomeu Costa Cabral did the drawing and Rui Guimarães transformed it into a Postcard. With him, the Marques da Silva Foundation wishes everyone Happy Holidays.

We take this opportunity to confirm that we will be closed from 23 December 2019, reopening on 2 January 2020.

The treatment of 1400 drawings with building solutions by Vasco Vieira da Costa, completed at the Marques da Silva Foundation with the support of the Conservation and Restoration Workshop of the University of Porto, was carried out firstly to make the information contained in them accessible. But the operation, made possible by Iperforma, intends to go further and take a new look at Vasco Vieira da Costa, calling attention to the need to reunite all of his collection in order to facilitate research on the work of an architect at the centre of Angolan Architecture in the second half of the 20th century.

On 12 December, Ana Freitas, Ana Tostões, Daniel Quintã and Julia Albani approached, under different perspectives and using concrete situations, the questions which are posed in relation to an architectural archive, from the collection and the locations of the collection to the treatment of the physical document and its availability to the public, passing through the narratives that can be constructed around it and its links to built examples.

The session was moderated by Luís Urbano, with an opening introduction by Margarida Quintã, curator of the show “Vasco Vieira da Costa: Library of Details”, which can be visited until 20 December in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier. Entrance is free.

See album of the session

Ana Freitas, Ana Tostões, Daniel Quintã and Julia Albani talk about Architectural Archives at the Marques da Silva Foundation. Luís Urbano moderates the conversation.

Today, at 1830 hrs, in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier (Marquês de Pombal Square, 44).

+ info

Over the course of three working days - 28 to 30 November - more than two dozen interventions by researchers associated with various European research centres shared a common space for the presentation and discussion of ideas, projects and new perspectives on the meetings of Team 10 and its impact in the Iberian Peninsula.

The meeting took place in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto. Available on the official website of this meeting are the video recordings of the opening session and Tom Avermaest´s conference, presented by Luís Urbano, Vice-President of the Marques da Silva Foundation, one of the partner organisations.

Issue number 10 of the magazine Joelho was also published, dedicated to the theme "Team 10: Debate and Media in Portugal and Spain".

Between 2014 and 2015, the Marques da Silva Foundation accepted the challenge of going ahead with the documentary treatment of a set of drawings by Vasco Vieira da Costa, belonging to the Agostinho Neto University. This was a collection consisting of 1411 documents, grouped into 12 folders, relating to records of building solutions between 1950 and 1982, and visibly affected by the passage of time.

It was for Ana Ramos and the Conceição Pratas to ensure the archival treatment, and for Ana Freitas to carry out the conservation and restoration (cleaning, planning, consolidating and packaging). Complex work which allowed us to weigh up and consider approaches and methodologies of preservation and treatment of the original physical document, to the creation of metadata, from safeguarding to technical handling, for research and dissemination.

Some of the drawings treated can now be viewed in the show "Vasco Vieira da Costa: Library of Details", connected with which will be the meeting between Ana Freitas, Ana Tostões, Daniel Quintã and Julia Albani. In a conversation moderated by Luís Urbano they will address and reflect upon this subject.

The session, to take place on 12 December, begins at 1830 hrs and entrance is free.
 
+ info

Alfredo Leal Machado was born on 7 December 1904. Here we see him in a photograph at the Porto School of Fine Arts, then located in the former Santo António Convent. He had started attending there in 1921. He graduated in Architecture in 1932.

In 1953, he was one of the 33 disciples of Marques da Silva represented in the show of homage to the Master which the School and the Association of Architects held on the School premises, exhibiting four works: the D. Manuel II Sanatorium in Vila Nova de Gaia, the Public Works Building and the Triunfo Factory in Coimbra, and the redesign of the interior space of the Abadia Restaurant in Porto. Others could also have been included, from designs for municipal buildings, to the Children´ s Houses developed for Bissaya Barreto, with particular emphasis on the design for the Boarding School and gardens of the complex located in Castanheira de Pêra.

However, he had returned to the School in 1951, not from an academic perspective, but as a territory for disciplinary practice. As a collaborator with Manuel Lima Fernandes de Sá, in relation to the National Buildings of the North, he co-designed a project for the Architecture Pavilion to be located in the gardens of the Braguinha Mansion, where the School had moved in 1937. This shows a modernist character, far removed from the Beaux Arts matrix reflected in his academic works.

On 12 December, the Marques da Silva Foundation will host the second round table programmed as part of the show "Vasco Vieira da Costa: Library of Details".

The treatment and restoration work on the collection of drawings of the architect Vasco Vieira da Costa, carried out at the Marques da Silva Foundation and the basis for this exhibition project, will be the starting point for a reflection on the challenges which are today facing the preservation and dissemination of architectural archives.

Taking part will be Ana Freitas, from the Conservation and Restoration Workshop of the University of Porto,  Daniel Quintã, representing Iperforma, the architectural and engineering consultancy firm which promoted the agreement with Agostinho Neto University, owners of this collection of drawings, Ana Tostões, President of Docomomo International, and Julia Albani, representing the Canadian Centre for Architecture. The moderator for the session will be Luís Urbano, Vice-President of the Marques da Silva Foundation.

+ info

"José Carlos Loureiro is today one of the architects of Porto. He has been since 1950. His interventions, larger and smaller, are dotted around the city. Sometimes, decisively, as in the case of the Sports Pavilion (he is not responsible for the heinous demolition of the Crystal Palace) which asserts itself as an "identifying sign of the new entrance to Porto via the Arrábida Bridge"; others, subtly, as in the case of the "Parnassus" building where, "between the isolated and referential street block" his respect for the old city is visible and it is also covered in ceramics.
(...)
A city that today recognises him as one of those who have shaped its face in the last (almost) 40 years; it is time to see asserting itself work that requires constant and thorough accuracy and rigour, in a way of working that is his own and, above all, is profoundly serious.

A man of skill, José Carlos Loureiro is one of the possible and necessary lessons for today´s architects."

These are the words of Manuel Correia Fernandes, published in 1987 in the University of Porto catalogue, Architectural Design, which today, more than 30 years later and with so many new and important works designed since then, retain all their meaning and timeliness.

José Carlos Loureiro was born on 2 December 1925. Congratulations, Architect!

Over the next three days, from 28 to 30 November, at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, the International Congress «Team Ten Farwest: Critical Revision of the Modern Movement in the Iberian Peninsula,1953-1981» will hold a discussion on the processes of reception and assimilation in Spain and Portugal of the ideas put forward at the meetings of Team 10 which took place between 1953 and 1981.

This International Congress, organised by Pedro Baía, Nelson Mota and Tiago Lopes Dias, together with the organising committees of the Guimarães (2017) and Barcelona (2018) meetings, has the Marques da Silva Foundation as an institutional partner. Representing it on 29 November at 1830 hrs will be the Vice-President, Luís Urbano, who will introduce the speaker, Tom Avermaete. 

+ info at www.teamtenfarwest.com

"With almost 3000 square metres, the Library occupies two buildings, one built from scratch and the other renovated, where the old olive press stands, preserved by the architect. The books and the memories of the past live side by side, between reading rooms, work rooms and play areas for different age groups. In the old building recovered from the Quinta das Fontes can be found a space of homage to the writer José Gomes Ferreira, father of the architect." (Alexandra Saraiva)

The Municipal Library of Marvila is the most recent design by Raúl Hestnes Ferreira to be opened, on 27 November 2016. The idea began to take shape at the end of the 1990s, with the Writing House, the design for a building to be constructed at Quinta das Fontes. In 2014, Lisbon City Council decided to reformulate the original design, endowing the space with a Library that would symbolise the start of a more ambitious programme to create a network of municipal facilities to promote social inclusion and citizenship. The design for the Marvila Library then began to take shape, in a compromise between the new and the renovation of the ruin, between the memory of the place and the challenges of the present. There would also be an area dedicated to his father, José Gomes Ferreira. It is therefore not surprising that around 2000 books belonging to the writer have been donated to this Library, as well as other items of his estate, from the writing desk to the pianola, to the dining room furniture designed by Francisco Keil do Amaral. But in this building, the architect also made the decision to merge literary work into the architecture, reproducing on two walls the illustrations that Abel Manta created for "The adventures of John Fearless". The design has been transformed into a place of celebration of many lives and many histories.
 
The warm manner with which this Library was welcomed by the people of Marvila, who made it their own from the moment that its doors were opened, was very moving for the architect at the opening event. Beyond the architectural and urban context of the design, the presence of people made it fulfill its most desired purpose, a sense of community.

Raúl Hestnes Ferreira was born on 24 November 1931.

The book «Bartolomeu Costa Cabral. 18 Obras [works]», edited by Paulo Providência and Pedro Baía, presents 18 works designed between 1960 and 2012 by the architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, a selection which illustrates his unique route through Portuguese architectural culture, from the design for the Bloco das Águas Livres to the more recent design for the Taipa house.

The second edition of this book from the Circle of Ideas is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation, as part of the reception of the collection of the architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, and is already available from the online Store.
 

Follow link to Store

Today, 20 November, at 1730 hrs in the FAUP Gallery, is the opening of the exhibition "Eileen Gray. Total Art: House E.1027 on a scale of 1:1", curated by Wilfried Wang and Carolina Leite, coordinated by Alberto Lage.

To anticipate the opening of the exhibition, a symposium will take place at 1500 hrs in the Fernando Távora Auditorium, seeking to discuss the importance, in the context of current architecture, of the house which Eileen Gray built in Roquebrune Cap Martin between 1926 and 1929, which she named E.1027. The speakers will be the architects Wilfried Wang, Ana Tostões, Lia Antunes and Carolina Leite.

Bookings are also open for three guided visits to the exhibition, taking place on the following dates:

Saturday 23 November, 1100 – 1200 hrs, with Carolina Leite
Saturday 30 November, 1100 – 1200 hrs, with Carolina Leite
Friday 6 December, 1900 - 2000 hrs, with Wilfried Wang (in English)

Participation is free, limited to a maximum of 20 people per visit, via prior registration on the  FAUP website.

+ info: www.arq.up.pt

Team Ten Farwest sets out to debate the uptake and assimilation processes of the architectural ideas of Team 10 under the critical revision of the Modern Movement in the Iberian Peninsula between 1953 and 1981. With this objective in mind, an International Conference will be hosted at FAUP – Porto University School of Architecture, from 28 to 30 November 2019 — the year that marks the 60th anniversary of the last CIAM Meeting of 1959, in Otterlo.

For the preparation of this International Conference, two preliminary meetings were held — in Guimarães (2017) and Barcelona (2018) — where several contributions of Portuguese and Spanish researchers were presented. These different historiographical perspectives were centred on subjects like the protagonists, the processes, architectural works, urbanism, and representation; from anthropology to cinema, from pedagogy to research, from architectural language to theory, from housing to tourism, from image to criticism.

The book “Team Ten Farwest: Guimarães 2017, Barcelona 2018”, published by Circo de Ideias, gathers the texts presented within the context of the meetings held in Guimarães and Barcelona, together with background notes from Joan Ockman, Łukasz Stanek and Dirk van den Heuvel.

Also in line with the International Conference, the issue n.10 of Joelho - Jornal of Architectural Culture, guest edited by Nuno Correia, Pedro Baía and Carolina B. García Estévez, proposes to deepen the knowledge about the means of diffusion in the Iberian Peninsula on the ideas coming out of the Team 10 meetings held in Europe between 1953 and 1981.

The Congress is organised by Pedro Baía, Nelson Mota and Tiago Lopes Dias, jointly with the organising committees of the Guimarães and Barcelona meetings. In addition to FAUP and the Marques da Silva Foundation, the Congress partners are: School of Architecture of the University of Minho; Lab2PT, Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra; TU Delft – Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment; and Circle of Ideas.
 

About the Congress programme

In the Congress programme are included seminars by Joan Ockman (presented by Francisco Ferreira - EAUM) on the 28th; Tom Avermaete (presented by Luís Urbano - FIMS) on the 29th; and Łukasz Stanek (presented by José António Bandeirinha - DARQ), and Dirk van den Heuvel (presented by Nelson Mota - TU Delft) on the 30th.
 
On Thursday 28 November, the opening of the Congress will include contributions from Teresa Calix (FAUP), Sérgio Fernandez and Pedro Baía.
 
On Friday 29 November, in the PhD work session, the contributions of Ilaria La Corte, Bruno Baldaia and João Luís Marques will be presented and discussed, and two publications will be presented: the magazine Joelho n.10, entitled «Team 10: Debate and Media in Portugal and Spain», by Gonçalo Canto Moniz, and the book «Jaap Bakema and the open society» by Dirk van den Heuvel.
 
In the Saturday sessions, dedicated to the themes of Habitat, Networks  and Media, the contributions of Ana Luísa Rodrigues, Paolo Sustersic, Esperanza Campaña, Nuno Grande, Julio Garnica, Leonor Matos Silva, Jorge Figueira, Carlos Machado e Moura and Ana Esteban-Maluenda will be presented and discussed.

The Congress sessions will be moderated by Óscar Ares Álvarez, Tiago Lopes Dias, Nelson Mota, Carolina B. García Estévez, Pedro Baía and Joaquim Moreno.

The seminars and contributions will be in English. The opening session, the PhD work session and the presentation of Joelho 10 will be in Portuguese.

Entrance is free, via prior registration on the Congress website.

Full programme and other information: www.teamtenfarwest.com

Starting yesterday and continuing until 20 December, in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, it will be possible to visit Vasco Vieira da Costa´ s "Library of Details" in the space where a small but significant set of drawings with constructive solutions is on display. An unusual point of departure for presenting architecture, but which takes on importance for the visibility which it brings to this phase of a project, complemented here by comparison with photographs of the building and other documentary records. In this way, "Vasco Vieira da Costa: Library of Details", a show organised by Margarida Quintã, subtly lets us glimpse the working process and the relevance of the work developed by this Angolan architect.

In the round table which yesterday marked the opening of the show to the public, Manuel Correia Fernandes, José Quintão and Carlos Madureira, moderated by Eliseu Gonçalves, remembered vivid episodes from the office of Vasco Vieira da Costa, in Luanda, during the early 1970s. With a lot of humour, they shared that common experience together with a figure whom they understood to be intrinsically an architect and who then assumed an almost paternal dimension. And they were unanimous in their appreciation of his way of being: calm, serious, attentive, marked by a mental and ethical rigour, by intelligence and sensitivity. Unanimous also in their recognition of the constructive and functional quality of his architecture, marked by a great rationality, inspiration and a modernist matrix, effectively interpreted and adapted, with ingenuity and simplicity, to the particularities of place and climate. Works such as the Kinaxixe Market, the English House and the Mutamba Building, current headquarters of the Angolan Ministry of Housing and Public Works, were some of the examples mentioned. It should be noted that, after completing his academic training between Porto and Paris, the city where he met and collaborated with Le Corbusier, and where, in 1947, he served as chaperone to his friend Fernando Távora, he returned to Luanda, where he remained, resisting the political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. There he would welcome Louis Kahn, who was keen to visit him, and who would be mainly responsible, after 25 April 1974, together with Manuel Correia Fernandes, for the creation of the Architecture Course at the Agostinho Neto University, today the holder of part of his documentary heritage. To close the session, which was attended by one of the sons of Vasco Vieira da Costa and Barbara Gratz-Carr, José Manuel Soares, with another humorous note, also gave his testimony and told some illustrative stories of the uniqueness of the couple.

The isolationism that was applied to the work of Vasco Vieira da Costa, by the contexts surrounding its production during the dictatorship, away from the centres of power, paradoxically guaranteed him a field of freedom for the development of relevant work that now needs to be recognised and safeguarded. The designs presented in "Vasco Vieira da Costa: Library of Details" are part of a collection that, after treatment and restoration undertaken at the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Conservation and Restoration Workshop of the University of Porto, are destined to return to Luanda as a basis for the creation of a Documentation Centre. The questions of preservation of this archive in particular, and of the archives of architecture in general, will be the subject of the second round table organised as part of this show, on 12 December, with Ana Freitas, Ana Tostões, Daniel Quintã and Julia Albani, moderated by Luís Urbano.

See album
 

The opening of the Show "Vasco Vieira da Costa: Library of Details" will set the scene for the round table which begins at 1830 hrs, in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, with António Madureira, José Quintão and Manuel Correia Fernandes, architects who are sharing with each other the passage through Vasco Vieira da Costa´ s workshop. Moderated by Eliseu Gonçalves, it is the first of two round tables to take place as part of this Show.

"Vasco Vieira da Costa: Library of Details", curated by Margarida Quintã, presents a set of designs particularly focused on solutions and constructive details arising from the documentary collection of the architect Vasco Vieira da Costa, heritage of the Agostinho Neto University (Luanda). 

The Show will remain open to the public until 20 December 2019.
Entrance is free, subject only to the availability of space.

+ info

The Anglo-Irish designer Eileen Gray (1878-1976) will be in the spotlight at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, in two initiatives: the Exhibition "Eileen Gray. Total Art: House E.1027 at a scale of 1:1" and the Symposium that marks its opening on 20 November, with the curators Wilfried Wang and Carolina Leite, and the speakers Ana Tostões and Lia Antunes.

On the rocky coast of the Côte d‘Azur at Roquebrune Cap Martin, Eileen Gray built a holiday home, white and elongated, which she called E.1027 (1926–1929). At the age of 52, this was her first incursion into the world of architecture, done with the support of her then companion Jean Badovici, editor of the avant garde magazine L´Architecture Vivante. For Gray, more than E.1027 being an opportunity to apply new spatial concepts, it would be a manifesto, revisited in her subsequent projects, for which she created not only the architecture, but also practically all the objects and items of furniture – a total work of art represented in this exhibition at a scale of 1:1.

The exhibition reproduces an area of the house, the bedroom, of around 24 square metres, aiming to portray not only the architectural space itself, but also revealing 15 previously unknown examples of the author´ s original furniture. Having been designed for a pedagogical purpose, it gives the visitor the possibility of interacting not only with the space but also with the furniture itself.

Initially designed for Mebanne Hall, Texas, in 2017, and already presented at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 2019, "Eileen Gray. Total Art: House E.1027 at a scale of 1:1" now arrives in Porto, after the publication, by Wasmuth, of a monograph entirely dedicated to this house, presenting content that reveals the research process that has led to the exhibition and that highlights its importance. It opens at 1730 hrs in the FAUP Gallery, and will remain open to the public until 3 January 2020.
 
This exhibition project, for which the Marques da Silva Foundation is an institutional partner, is organised by the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, The University of Texas at Austin, O´Neil Ford Chair in Architecture, Krafna Architects (Porto) and Hoidn Wang Partner (Berlin).

+ info www.arq.up.pt

At the launch session for Gonçalo Canto Moniz´ s book, "O Ensino Moderno da Arquitectura" [Modern Teaching in Architecture], it was made clear why it is important to look back and understand how the first Schools of Architecture, in Porto and Lisbon, were building their identity. Only in this way is it possible to understand the place they occupy today, in a necessarily different territory, more shared and diverse, heir to the Beaux Arts matrix which ruled the first half of the 20th century and the pedagogical experiences that followed and affirmed other paradigms of teaching, in a permanent attempt to approach the real contexts that would shape and witness the practice of architecture.

This book presents a first monographic reading in this field of analysis. José António Bandeirinha highlighted the scientific rigour and usefulness of the study carried out, as well as the importance of the instrumental character which it now acquires; Alexandre Alves Costa, also supervisor of the original thesis work, considered that this consultation is essential in tracing the history of the teaching of Architecture in Portugal and in particular in Porto, in conjunction with the work of Eduardo Fernandes and Raquel Paulino, among others.

With the authority of someone who lived through a significant part of the historical process that "the Modern Teaching of Architecture" seeks to reconstruct, Alexandre Alves Costa has shared his "histories", giving voice to the utopias which fed the slow transformation that took place: the illusion of modernism carried out by the Reform of 1957; the desire to approach the real, with the immersion in the city (or cities); the emergence of analysis and the proposal of a scientific spirit; the urgency of the synthesis framed by the Inquiry; and the paradoxical claim of Design and History after the April revolution. Thus the different paths of each School were travelled and the present time was reached, becoming this sentimental and lived history, finally, the point of departure for Gonçalo Canto Moniz´ s research, which now, translated into a book, seeks to be an active contribution to the rethinking of the pedagogical practices of the present-day Schools of Architecture.

In this session, homage was also given to the figure of Marques da Silva, in the 150th anniversary year of his birth, a decisive person in this narrative for the style of teaching which he helped to implement and for the style of architecture which he practised. Gonçalo Canto Moniz has recognised the archival richness of the Marques da Silva Foundation and of the University of Porto and their pivotal role in the research carried out. The book, published by the Marques da Silva Foundation in partnership with Edições Afrontamento, is here to demonstrate that.

See Album of the Session

The image of a "hen surrounded by chicks" was used by Carlos Ramos to illustrate his method of teaching, based around monitoring the work on the drawing board and in “collective teaching”, that is, involving groups of students in the critiquing of the project.

In the photograph reproduced on the cover of O Ensino Moderno da Arquitetura [Modern Teaching in Architecture], we see him, in 1958, surrounded by Gunther Wilhem, José Forjaz, Fernanda Alcântara, Manuel Marques de Aguiar, and at the back, José Semide and Fernando Távora, at the Porto High School of Fine Arts, during the UIA Summer Course.

In this book by Gonçalo Canto Moniz, we follow the everyday life of the two schools then responsible for the training of Portuguese architects, in Porto and Lisbon, to trace the slow trajectory in the construction of a paradigm in the modern teaching of Architecture in Portugal.

On 11 November, at 1830 hrs, Alexandre Alves Costa and José António Bandeirinha will introduce it in a session also attended by representatives of the publishers, Fátima Vieira for the Marques da Silva Foundation, and José Ribeiro of Edições Afrontamento.


+ info

Tomorrow, 8 November, at 1400 hrs, in the Auditorium of the Museum of Electricity in Funchal, Madalena Vidigal will speak about the Fishermen´ s Housing Estate, a project developed in the workshop of Rui Goes Ferreira, during the 1970s, in Câmara de Lobos. The rightness of the place and the living conditions offered by this set of houses translated into a rapid appropriation by those for whom they were built, soon after their construction, completed in 1982.  With this a city was built and the needs of social integration were met for a community which faced real problems of poverty and exclusion.

Madalena Vidigal´s contribution is part of the initiative organised by the Order of Architects - Madeira Delegation to celebrate Architecture Month and has for its theme “Collective Housing: City for all”.

The panel members will be Helena Roseta, Nuno Brandão da Costa, Ricardo Carvalho and Luís Spranger, moderated by Catarina Fernandes.

Entrance is free but pre-booking is required.

Alcino Soutinho in the Chinati Foundation (Marfa, Texas), in 1998, photographed by Laura Soutinho, occupying the centre of a space where the sculptures of Donald Judd merge into their own territory, in a strange coexistence determined by the raw display of elements, by structures reduced to the essential, by the inhospitable landscape that defines their contours.

For Alcino Soutinho, a permanent traveller but always an architect, "journeys always subjugated themselves to architecture, because it is one thing to see architecture, but its representation in books is another thing". As Helena Barroco said in the 2010 interview quoted here, "I had a very exciting time." And Alcino Soutinho travelled, between professional complicity and the taste of affection, in all the continents, from Asia, to the USA, to Latin America.

Also the interest in Museums, in the many forms that they can assume, was another of his constants, as the numerous travel records, of which this photograph is one, or the exhibition that took place this year in the Museum of Neo-Realism, have made evident. It is in this mode of action, in this continuum that helps to construct his work, his journey, the identity of his architectural look. Work that is now material for research, and so a new pathway begins. Tomorrow, with Helena Barranha, curator of the exhibition, it will return to the American continent and will be in Buenos Aires, at the 12th International Conference on the Inclusive Museum: Museums, Heritage and Sustainable Tourism, as a central theme of his communication: "Designing a Cultural Catalyst. Museum Architecture in the Work of Alcino Soutinho."

Alcino Soutinho was born on 6 November 1930.

The Exhibition Vasco Vieira da Costa: Library of Details, curated by Margarida Quintã, will make known a set of drawings particularly focused on solutions and constructive details coming from the documentary collection of the architect Vasco Vieira da Costa.

It opens on 14 November, in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, at 1830 hrs, and will remain open to the public until 20 December 2019.

In parallel with this, two round tables will take place. The first marks the opening of the Exhibition, bringing together three of Vieira da Costa´s collaborators: António Madureira, José Quintão and Manuel Correia Fernandes. The moderator will be Eliseu Gonçalves. Following this, on 12 December, also at the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, at 1830 hrs, will be the meeting between Ana Freitas (Conservation and Restoration Workshop, University of Porto), Ana Tostões (Docomomo International), Daniel Quintã (Iperforma) and Julia Albani (Canadian Centre for Architecture), moderated by Luís Urbano (Marques da Silva Foundation), to discuss the challenges that present themselves today in the preservation of architectural archives.

+ info
 

At the 2019 Marques da Silva Seminars, José Capela showed “ways of doing nothing”, that is, the many forms of emphasising the individuality of each place - intended for shows (theatre, opera or dance), exhibitions or installations - through a reinvention of scenographic experiences developed by someone who cannot stop being an architect.

Showing what is there, moving another location by replicating it on the stage, showing how it is done, delegating authorship, using “ready made” objects, or copying with self-righteous shamelessness, were the various paths followed along a route, already recognised and rewarded with prizes, of the construction of scenographies which has its line of continuity in the instrumentalisation of photography and in the desire to manipulate the image. The works presented made evident the game between the two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality of images as a way of feeding the illusion inherent in the scenic space, whose final reading can only be fully realised when all the components unite at the moment when the show takes place.

To open this Seminar, which took place on 31 October, were Fátima Vieira, Chair of the Marques da Silva Foundation, the organising institution, and João Pedro Xavier, Director of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, partner organisation in this initiative.

See photo album

Within a few hours of the 13th Marques da Silva Seminars, with José Capela and "ways of doing nothing", we are launching Newsletter #40.
 

See Newsletter #40 | Outubro 2019

On 11 November, at 1830 hrs, in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, Alexandre Alves Costa and José António Bandeirinha will introduce Gonçalo Canto Moniz´ s book, "O Ensino Moderno da Arquitectura: A formação do Arquitecto nas Escolas de Belas-Artes em Portugal (1931-1969)" [Modern Teaching in Architecture: training the Architect in the Schools of Fine Art in Portugal (1931-1969)], a joint publication of the Marques da Silva Foundation, represented by its Chairperson, Fátima Vieira, and Edições Afrontamento, represented by José Ribeiro, with the support of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto.


+ info

"I didn´t like scenography when I began, without having planned it, to do scenography. I didn´t appreciate the recurring opposition between the architecture of theatre rooms and the architecture of what is installed on the stage, and I preferred the rooms to the scenery. I began by adopting strategies for appropriating one´s own spaces of representation – strategies that one might call, falling back on the vocabulary of the visual arts, site-specific. Using or emphasising what is already there. That possibility of appropriating “things not made by me” has extended to other aspects of scenography, in particular by referring decisions to the work of others. I often put myself in this position of simple placement, whereby I decide but I don´t take action. One of the chapters of my doctoral thesis was called: ways of doing nothing. And it is about modes of non-action, about possibilities of calculated choice not to do, that I propose to talk." (José Capela)

José Capela, architect and scenographer, will be the speaker at the 2019 Marques da Silva Seminars. "ways of doing nothing" is his subject.

Taking place on Thursday 31 October, in the Fernando Távora Auditorium at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, at 1830 hrs. Free entrance.

Note: the image used on the poster, by José Carlos Duarte, is from the scenography for Hamlet, a flying suitcase project (2014).
 

+ info

In 2019, a year when the S. João National Theatre building, designed by Marques da Silva, started preparing to celebrate the upcoming centenary, the Marques da Silva Seminars cycle, organised annually by the Marques da Silva Foundation with the support of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, offers the stage to a scenic architect: José Capela. And by looking in the other direction, moving from the architectural object to the scenographic project, José Capela takes up the challenge to speak in this seminar about modes of non-action, taking as his theme the title of his set design catalogue: ways of doing nothing.

Taking place on 31 October, at 1830 hrs, in the Fernando Távora Auditorium of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto. Entrance is free.

+ info

José Marques da Silva was born on 18 October 1869. Today, 150 years after his birth, his name is more than the memory of a life and the record of the projects he created. In the place where this architect lived there is now a Foundation dedicated to the preservation, study and dissemination of Portuguese architecture.

A plan to expand its facilities, already underway, and an ambitious exhibition programme for the Residence-Atelier and the Lopes Martins Mansion, with exhibits dedicated to the comprehensive documentary collection preserved at the Marques da Silva Foundation, recently expanded with the donation of more than ten collections of Portuguese architects, will mark the institution´ s near future. Its undeniable relevance will also be reflected in agreements to be established with similar institutions.

+ info

The Porto Major Seminary hosted the VI International Congress of Contemporary Religious Architecture, from 10 to 12 October, on the subject ‘Architectures for a new liturgy: Interventions in religious heritage after the Vatican II Council’.

It was an intensive programme designed to reflect on the need to promote interdisciplinarity between Architecture, Art and Theology in responding to the challenges that contemporaneity poses. The itinerary proposed as part of this Congress also offered to participants the unique opportunity to visit the Church of S. Veríssimo guided by its author, the Architect José Carlos Loureiro. To round off the tour, it was also possible to visit Marques da Silva´ s contribution to the Church of Cedofeita.

The initiative, which was supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation, was organised by the Observatory of Contemporary Religious Architecture (OARC), the FAUP Centre for the Study of Architecture and Urbanism, and the Centre for the Study of Religious History – CEHR-UCP, bringing together specialists from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Hungary, Croatia, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Belgium and Australia.

The Marques da Silva Foundation, the space and the project that brings to life the will and dream of a woman architect, Maria José Marques da Silva, hosted last Friday the session of the cycle "And yet they move: Women in the Arts and Sciences" whose purpose was to focus discussion on the presence of women in the field of Architecture. There was talk about the production of knowledge, the presence of women in education, in project activities and in the design of urban territory. The issue of visibility was raised, and the role that research and archives can play in the recovery of memory and in the reconfiguration of historiography relating to times when the right to practise the discipline of architecture had to be earned. There was talk of Maria José Marques da Silva´ s pioneering spirit and the surprising modernity expressed in her academic works. There was reference to the need to build a critical awareness and to establish networks that ensure the representation and recognition of women even in our own times.

Participants in this discussion, moderated by Marinela Freitas, were Patrícia Pedrosa, Jorge Figueira and Joana Lage.

This multidisciplinary cycle continues until 29 October (see programme)

In the archives of the Marques da Silva Foundation we find the academic work of Maria José Marques da Silva, the first woman to be awarded a degree by the Porto School of Fine Arts, in 1943. (...) Will it be possible, from this, to imagine a different person?
The numerous photographs of Maria José Marques da Silva´ s wedding show the rurality that has always dominated Portugal, until we joined Europe, and a relationship with the land always closer to Frank Lloyd Wright than to Le Corbusier, as Fernando Távora´ s episode in Taliesin makes evident. (...) Can an archive reconstruct a character?

(Jorge Figueira)

 

 Today at 1830 hrs, the Lopes Martins Mansion (one of the headquarters buildings of the Marques da Silva Foundation and the house where the architect Maria José Marques da Silva lived, pictured here when preparing to defend her CODA, at ESBAP, in 1943) will open its doors again to host the round table that takes the cycle "And yet they move! Women in the Arts and Sciences" into the field of Architecture.

Participants in this session, moderated by Marinela Freitas, are Joana Pestana Lage, Jorge Figueira and Patrícia Santos Pedrosa. Entrance is free.

* Lopes Martins Mansion, Pr. Marquês de Pombal, nº 30, Porto
 

+ info

The sounds of the renovation of the Emporium building and the opening of the Casa Manoel de Oliveira, with the display of drawings for the Casa da Vilarinha and the scenery designs for "Aniki Bóbó", are the most recent contributions to the recognition of the name of José Porto and evidence of his work at the present time. After all, the one considered by Manoel de Oliveira to be "a very special person, demanding and incorruptible", was the architect who, arriving in Porto from Paris in the mid-1930s, always directed his attention towards aesthetics and the balance of forms, whether they were architectural, object-related or human.

José Porto was born in Vilar de Mouros on 10 October 1883.

“And yet they move … in architecture”, one of the programmed initiatives in the cycle "And yet they move! Women in the Arts and Sciences", seeks to give visibility to women architects, highlighting their pioneering work in the field and emphasising the obstacles that they had (and continue to have) to overcome in order to be known and recognised in the profession.

Patrícia Santos Pedrosa, Jorge Figueira and Joana Pestana Lage will be the guest speakers at this session. The round table, moderated by Marinela Freitas, will take place in the renovated dining room of the Lopes Martins Mansion (pr. Marquês de Pombal, nº 30), one of the two houses which form the headquarters of the Marques da Silva Foundation, a project born out of the vision of the couple Maria José Marques da Silva and David Moreira da Silva in order to preserve the meeting space of their lives: architecture.

On 11 October, at 1830 hrs, at the Architect José Marques da Silva Foundation Institute (FIMS).  Not to be missed!
 

+ info

The VI International Congress of Contemporary Religious Architecture will take place between 10 and 12 October. Organised by the Observatory of Contemporary Religious Architecture (OARC), the FAUP Centre for the Study of Architecture and Urbanism and the Centre for the Study of Religious History - CEHR-UCP, it is dedicated to the theme "Architectures for a new liturgy. Interventions in religious heritage after the Vatican II Council".

In addition to the information and round tables provided in the Congress programme, an itinerary of tours has been designed which includes the visit to the Matriz de Valbom Church, designed by the Architect José Carlos Loureiro who will also be present. The schedule also includes a visit to the Cedofeita Church, where we will of course talk about the contributions of the Architect José Marques da Silva throughout the complex process that led to its construction.

This initiative, scientifically coordinated by Esteban Fernández-Cobián (University of Coruña. Coordinator), João Luis Marques (CEAU-FAUP) and João Alves da Cunha (CEHR-UCP), is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation.

+ info

"Arts Heritage Leisure" was the overarching theme of the European Heritage Days which took place between 27 and 29 September. With cinema, photography, modern architecture, music, fashion, games and an intricate plot in the ambiguous territory of urban landscapes, interior and exterior, characteristic of Antonioni, all of which are present in "Blow-Up", for all of these reasons, this film formed part of the proposal for the Marques da Silva Foundation´ s participation in this 2019 event.

The session, moderated by Luís Urbano and Francisco Ferreira, took place in the dining room of the Lopes Martins Mansion, a space which will open its doors again on 11 October for a new meeting, details of which will be available soon.

The European Day of Foundations and Donors is celebrated on 1 October. The Marques da Silva Foundation is taking part in this celebration by sharing two statements which allow us to make known our foundational project and the activities in which we have been involved.
 

The Marques da Silva Foundation, instituted by the University of Porto from the legacy of the architects Maria José and David Moreira da Silva, heirs of the architect José Marques da Silva, was formally recognised on 13 July 2009 (Despacho nº 16482/2009), after the statutory transformation of the Architect José Marques da Silva Institute, created in 1994. 

Statement by the Chair of the Board: Prof. Dr Fátima Vieira
Statement by the researcher: Prof. Dr Gonçalo Canto Moniz

+ info: FIMS - video recordings
Portuguese Foundations Centre

“In the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, architecture functions not only as a setting or backdrop, but also as its psychological and cultural equivalent. The architectural spaces help to shape the tone and the environment of that world and of its characters. For Antonioni, there is an inherent system of values within particular architectural styles: The streamlined skeleton construction of modern architecture has ... a negative connotation, while the elaborate organic stylisations of the Baroque are idealized as representative of lost tradition and beauty.”

Diane Borden, “Antonioni and Architecture”, Mise-en-scène 2 (1980): 25.

Blow-Up, Antonioni´ s mythical film, shot in 1966, will be the starting point for a conversation between Luis Urbano and Francisco Ferreira. Two architects, two teachers who have been devoting part of their attention to the intersections between cinema and architecture, for an exchange of impressions, to be extended to all those present, on the intersections between these two forms of expression and, in particular, on the way in which they are present in Antonioni.

This initiative, which will introduce the renovated Dining Room of the Lopes Martins Mansion, marks the participation of the Marques da Silva Foundation in the European Heritage Days, whose theme for this year is Arts Heritage Leisure.


+ info

"Maria José Marques da Silva: architecture on several fronts" was the theme proposed by Jorge Figueira for his participation in Congress II of the Association of Brazilianists in Europe (ABRE). His session, which will address the projects, the associative career and the institutional legacy of the first woman to be trained in Architecture in the city of Porto, will take place tomorrow, 18 September, in Paris, as part of the panel "Gender, architecture and modern domesticity", between 1330 hrs and 1600 hrs.

The second part of this Congress will take place in the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), between 18 and 21 September, and will discuss a wide range of themes and disciplines covering architecture, literature, cinema, music, plastic arts, heritage, the Amazon, Amerindian populations, and how they relate to colonial history, military dictatorship, contemporary slavery, racial and gender issues, migration and environmental issues, urban politics and inequalities, among other subjects.
 

+ info II ABRE Congress

+ info Maria José Marques da Silva

The gaze of Fernando Lanhas from a disconcerting red armchair in the mountains of Valongo. A resting researcher on a study tour of fossils and minerals photographed by his son Pedro Lanhas, in the 1990s, on his way to Mont´Alto. An unusual photograph of an unusual character.  An architect by training, Fernando Lanhas covered many fields of knowledge. He was born on 16 September 1923. His professional archive was donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation on 18 May this year.

+ info

This event took place yesterday, in the Novitiate Room of the Convent of Christ. A conversation moderated by Rui Serrano, with Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, Luís Urbano (vice-president of FIMS), Madalena Cunha Matos, Mariana Couto, Pedro Baía, Rui Mendes, Telmo Cruz and Maximina Almeida  speaking about Architecture, about the Architecture of Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, about form, function and life, about modernism and contemporaneity, with reflections on the passage of time in the ways of doing and thinking about design, about a career of great longevity, of 70 years of disciplinary practice, translated into two hundred designs, in which the experience of the Águas Livres Block takes on a crucial role.

"The Ethics of Things" closes today, to be followed by the touring exhibition, the reissue of the book published by Circo de Ideias, now with the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation and, above all, by the opening of new approaches to understanding the work of Bartolomeu Costa Cabral with the donation of his archive to this institution.

The conference "Bartolomeu Costa Cabral architecture 1953-2012", taking place in the Novitiate Room of the Convent of Christ in Tomar next Saturday, 14 September, will include a meeting between the architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral and Luís Urbano (vice-president of FIMS), Madalena Cunha Matos, Mariana Couto, Pedro Baía, Rui Mendes, Rui Serrano and Telmo Cruz.

Together, in an informal conversation which also aims to extend itself to the audience, they will address topics such as Architecture and modernism; Architecture and society; Architecture and planning; Architecture and heritage; Architecture, sensitivity and emotions; Architecture, function and movement; Architecture and natural light.

This initiative marks the close of the exhibition "The Ethics of Things", the exhibition which since 29 June has been showing 18 representative designs from the various fields in which the architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral has worked, from educational establishments to a range of other projects, including individual and collective housing.

It should be noted that the architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral´ s professional archive was recently donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation, and the process of integrating it into this institution´ s Documentation Centre is underway.

Today marks 105 years since the birth of Maria José Marques da Silva. Daughter of José Marques da Silva, she became the first woman to train in Architecture in Porto. She built a long career as an architect, in partnership with David Moreira da Silva, and she did not give up fighting for the discipline and its standards as an association leader. But in parallel with her own life was also her defence of the legacy left by her father, for example in 1953, where we see her in the photo, unveiling the facsimile of José Marques da Silva´ s signature on the facade of the S. João Theatre, as part of the tribute organised by ESBAP, ANBA and SNA, and in what today is the most visible aspect of her actions, the Marques da Silva Foundation.

The Avenida das Tílias, in the Crystal Palace Gardens, welcomes back the Porto Book Fair, and the Marques da Silva Foundation, again in the University of Porto Pavilion (pavilion 4), will also be represented with its publications.

This year the Book Fair will bring together 128 exhibitors – including publishers, booksellers, book dealers, distributors and institutions – spread over 130 pavilions. The programme, which includes a homage to the teacher and essayist Eduardo Lourenço, an evocation of Fernão de Magalhães´ s circumnavigation of the earth, 50 years since man set foot on the Moon, and the 100th anniversary celebration of Sophia and Sena, includes debates, spoken word sessions, lessons, a film cycle, an exhibition, workshops, and educational and animation programmes.

The Fair begins tomorrow, 6 September, at 1200 hrs, and will remain open to the public until the 22nd, from Monday to Friday. On Saturdays and Sundays it begins at 1100 hrs. It closes at 2130 hrs from Sunday to Thursday and at 2300 hrs on Friday and Saturday. Entrance is free.

+ info

“We have known each other for a long time …
But I only began to know her better when, together, we began the romance of her – and our – transformation. I had to touch her, and touching her was an act of love, long and slow, persistent and cautious, with doubts and certainties, it was a sinuous and flexible process and not a drawing board project, it was the method of a man in love, not of a cold technocrat, it was a drawing of a gesture rather than a drawing on paper.
Thus it was, ten years of many long gestures and a small amount of paper, ten years of fixing and deciding with caution the transformations which both – she and I – were lovingly accepting.
Thus our lives crossed: today she is continuing in her space and in her time, and her design is there, writing and recording the story of our romance.
We have known each other for a long time.”

(Fernando Tavora, "Prologue", Fernando Távora, My House, C3, pp. 44-45)

 

So writes Fernando Távora, who today, 25 August, would have been 96 years old. The Covilhã House in Guimarães already had a long history when, in 1973, this architect, knowing something of her soul and of her body, began its restoration and renovation. Ten years later, at the end of the quoted text, destined for the catalogue of Eleven Porto Architects. Recent works, he acknowledged that "now we know each other better and are both different".

The House, through his son, the architect José Bernardo Távora, continues to perpetuate the story of this romance and remains literally and symbolically alive. Its heritage value - architectural, historical, artistic, symbolic - should soon be recognised, as the building is in the process of being classified.

On World Photography Day, we are sharing two photographs dating from the early 20th century which capture the moment of construction and the interior of a sacred space situated in the region of Greater Porto. But only a careful look could identify the church designed by Marques da Silva for the Parish of S. Martinho de Cedofeita, in 1899, for the life and materiality that they exhibit have long been swallowed up by time.

The images are almost 30 years apart, with the opening for worship of the main chapel meriting the honours of the press: "The new church of Cedofeita was given a solemn opening on Sunday – a costly work, for many years paralysed for lack of resources, but which the generous pockets of the Catholics, some of them to the point of sacrifice, managed to accomplish, not yet completely, but in such a way that this church might already host divine worship.” (“The new church of Cedofeita”, Comércio do Porto, 12.11.1929)

Advances and setbacks would lead to the partial demolition of the ‘new’ church and pastoral centre, with the consequent abandonment of the function initially envisaged for the remainder. Proposals followed from António Agnelo Barbosa de Abreu, Octávio Lixa Filgueiras and Fernando Abrunhosa de Brito, and it would fall to Eugénio Alves de Sousa in the 1970s to produce the design for the finished Church, which today we can see near the Romanesque Church. The current invitation is to compare the photographic images with the place, an invitation to tour Cedofeita and to discover in the immediate vicinity of the new temple the ghostly presence of other tastes, desires and ambitions.

For those who would like to know more:
António Tomás Duran Castro recently completed some research work which offers “A critical look at the history of the pastoral centre of the church of Cedofeita – From concept to completion”. These and other images, as well as the survey of unpublished material which documents the long and peculiar history of the construction of the church(es) of Cedofeita, can now be consulted in his Masters dissertation, supervised by João Luís Marques and recently defended at FAUP.

Marques da Silva´ s design can be viewed in the Gallery and the FIMS Digital Archive.

The habitat problem is a constant with Octávio Lixa Filgueiras, who was the Zone II team´ s coordinating architect in Portugal´ s Popular Architecture Survey, the teacher who promoted the Urban Surveys as part of the discipline of Analytical Architecture, the active participant in many meetings, national and international, of architecture and urbanism, and the author of texts such as “The social function of the architect” and “The Genesis of the Habitat Charter”, both during the 1960s.

It is therefore not surprising that, in the library donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation, there are several titles relating to this theme, as in the case of “La Charte d’ Athènes”, offered ‘to Octávio’ by Fernando Vieira Campos, with underlinings giving evidence of careful reading, or of the book by Heath Licklider, “Architectural Scale”, acquired in February 1967, in which are hidden handwritten notes on Ricci and Savioli, echoes of the first biennial of the Inhabited House, which took place in 1965 in Florence, and dedicated to “today´ s interiors”.

With close to a thousand records relating to multiple fields and areas of interest, the professional library of this architect, born in Porto on 16 August 1922, is practically inventoried and will soon be available for viewing.

The photograph which accompanies this item, dated January 1953, was supplied by Carlos Carvalho Dias and was taken at Francisco Pereira da Costa´ s studio. From left to right are António Côrte-Real, Francisco Pereira da Costa, João José Tinoco, Octávio Lixa Filgueiras, Carlos Carvalho Dias and Eduardo Iglésias. The photographer is unknown.

The flow of visitors which always guided the actions of the participants Manuel Mendes, Benjamín Barney-Caldas and Andres Erazo in Cali, was very revealing of the interest aroused by the Architecture of the three architects represented in the exhibition “The Character of Tradition in the Architecture of Barney, Távora, Coderch”. A conference, the conversation and guided visit which took place at the Museum thus mark the closing programme of an exhibition which is now preparing to go on tour. At the same time, a Class by Manuel Mendes also took place for the opening of the Semester, in the Faculty of Architecture, University of San Buenaventura.

See album

"O Ensino Moderno da Arquitectura: A formação do Arquitecto nas Escolas de Belas-Artes em Portugal (1931-1969)" [Modern Teaching in Architecture: training the Architect in the Schools of Fine Art in Portugal (1931-1969)], a book by Gonçalo Canto Moniz, published in partnership by the Marques da Silva Foundation and Afrontamento Editions, traces the trajectory of the construction of a paradigm in the modern teaching of Architecture in Portugal. The work, which analyses the everyday life of the two schools then responsible for the training of Portuguese architects, allows us to think again about the role of the architect during a central period in Portuguese architecture, but also to reflect on the school of Architecture today, 40 years after its entry into the democratic university system. As José António Bandeirinha states in the book´ s Preface, it is a valuable tool for thinking about pedagogy throughout the modern period, and that makes it a precious document, also in the field of theory and criticism of architecture.

 + info

Miguel Ventura Terra´ s links with Porto are not well known, even though it was the city where he received his first training in Architecture, where he formed friendships, and where he would eventually be called upon to work at various moments in his life.

José Pedro Tenreiro has investigated and traced these links to the area and with the other professionals working in Porto at that time. Ventura Terra and Porto is the result of the research carried out.

To access the text and for more information, click here.

The book "O Ensino Moderno da Arquitectura: a formação do arquitecto nas Escolas de Belas-Artes em Portugal (1931-1969)" [Modern Teaching in Architecture: training the architect in the Schools of Fine Art in Portugal (1931-1969)], by Gonçalo Canto Moniz, jointly published by the Marques da Silva Foundation and Edições Afrontamento, will have its first public presentation on 5 August, in the Faculty of Architecture of the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil).

The launch of the book arises in the context of the seminar and conversation which Gonçalo Canto Moniz will carry out with Nivaldo Andrade and Edson Fernandes, on the subject of "modern teaching" in contemporary pedagogical practices.

"O Ensino Moderno da Arquitectura: a formação do arquitecto nas Escolas de Belas-Artes em Portugal (1931-1969)" [Modern Teaching in Architecture: training the architect in the Schools of Fine Art in Portugal (1931-1969)] traces the slow trajectory of the construction of a paradigm in the modern teaching of Architecture in Portugal, in a particularly rich period for Portuguese society and for international architectural culture. A period in which are concentrated the most significant pedagogical transformations for the understanding of our contemporaneity. It analyses this complex process of the formalisation of experiences which then sought to implement a theoretical body and common practice, internationally recognisable, in the country´ s two unique Schools of Fine Art, located in Porto and Lisbon. Relationships, balances and tensions are addressed from the perspective of their protagonists: legislators, politicians, teachers, students and architects, as well as the spaces that shaped and reflected them.

The book will soon be available nationally.

+ info

After the António Armesto conference, at the inaugural session of the exhibition The character of tradition in the architecture of Barney, Távora, Coderch (La Tertulia Museum, Cali, Colombia), it will now be the turn of Manuel Mendes, on 1 August, to give the last seminar in the programme of activities running alongside the exhibition. It will take place in the auditorium of the Cinematheque Museum, entitled "Fernando Távora. The circumstances: historical traditional modern, operativity objectivity authenticity, humanity". This will be followed by a conversation with Benjamín Barney and Andrés Erazo.
 
On this trip to Colombia, Manuel Mendes will also, together with Andres Erazo, be conducting a guided tour of the Exhibition and, on 31 July, marking the opening of the second semester of the Architecture Course in the University of San Buenaventura´ s Faculty of Architecture with a class on "Álvaro Siza, the naturalness of synthesis in the free evolution of thought in drawing: perhaps begin the journey again?"

The exhibition The character of tradition in the architecture of Barney, Távora, Coderch will remain open to the public until 18 August.

Yesterday, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the intentions of (EU)ROPA: Rise of Portuguese Architecture were revealed. Admittedly polysemic, transversal and open to participation and internationalisation, this project´ s main purpose is to take a new look at Portuguese Architecture and its connection with today´ s world. To outline a new perspective on what defines its identity, the way in which it has been constructed and, as has been stated, to propose ten interpretative keys to set off a dialogue of different voices, generations, times and geographies.

After hearing from the chief researchers, Jorge Figueira and Bruno Gil, with their definition of the general structure of the project, it was the turn of each of the researchers invited to coordinate the various thematic lines - Ana Vaz Milheiro, Carlos Machado e Moura, Carolina Coelho, Eliana Sousa Santos, Gonçalo Canto Moniz, José António Bandeirinha, Luís Miguel Correia, Nuno Grande, Patrícia Pedrosa and Rui Lobo - to present their positions and methodologies.

The different angles of approach and critical questioning of the phenomenon of the ‘rise’ and dissemination of Portuguese Architecture thus pass through their analysis from the point of view of History, Historiography, Fascism, Colonialism, Society, Education, Research, misaligned and alternative Practices, and Gender, what it means to be Portuguese.

The session, opened by the President of the Marques da Silva Foundation, who emphasised the relevance of the partnership established with CES for the realisation of (EU)ROPA: Rise of Portuguese Architecture, was a first opportunity to share with the public some forthcoming new developments.

See album

Today at the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier we are talking about Portuguese Architecture as part of the project (EU)ROPA: Rise of Portuguese Architecture, the first highlight in Newsletter #39.

See   Newsletter #39

The photograph was taken in front of the mythical House of Albarraque, designed in 1960 by Raúl Hestnes Ferreira for his father, the writer José Gomes Ferreira, and well reflects the lively atmosphere during the trip which made possible a visit to 18 works by this architect in Lisbon, Avis, Beja, Évora, Moita.

A trip which also transported the group into the personal universe of Hestnes Ferreira, evoking stories of childhood shared by Pitum Keil do Amaral, to the sound of the songs that formed part of his daily life.

This initiative was organised by Alexandra Saraiva and Paulo Tormenta Pinto, researchers at Dinâmia (ISCTE-IUL), and was supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation which was represented by its Vice-President, Luís Urbano.

With the participation of Jorge Figueira (Chief Researcher), Bruno Gil (Chief Co-Researcher) and Ana Vaz Milheiro, Carlos Machado e Moura, Carolina Coelho, Eliana Sousa Santos, Gonçalo Canto Moniz, José António Bandeirinha, Luís Miguel Correia, Nuno Grande, Patrícia Pedrosa and Rui Lobo there will be a presentation of the project (EU)ROPA - Rise of Portuguese Architecture: Fundamentals, Platform, Progression. It will take place on the 16th, at the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, starting at 1830 hrs.

This project, which is based at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, with the partnership of the Marques da Silva Foundation, aims to identify, systematise, characterise and reveal one of the most celebrated phenomena of contemporary culture – Portuguese architecture – and consider its history, ideas and methods, with a world in transformation.  Bringing together a group of researchers with significant experience in this area, the project takes advantage of their experiences in the creation of an innovative reading of Portuguese architecture, launching a new critical dimension and global relevance.

Entrance is free.

+ info

Available for public consultation, the Report on Activities and Management for the year 2018.

See Report

On 5 and 6 July we will Dive into the South of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira. The visit, organised by Alexandra Saraiva and Paulo Tormenta Pinto of Dinâmia ISCTE-IUL, with the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation, will allow another visit to an important set of works designed by Raúl Hestnes Ferreira in locations such as Lisbon, Évora, Avis, Beja, Moita and Albarraque.

In anticipation of the start of the Itinerary, at 0900 hrs on the 5th, at ISCTE-IUL, it will be possible to attend the Seminar which brings together the testimonies of former colleagues at Raúl Hestnes Ferreira´ s atelier, and of the organisers, Luís Urbano, representing the Marques da Silva Foundation, and Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues, Rector of IUL.

Also taking part in the visit will be Ana Tostões, António Bandeirinha, António Batista Coelho and some of the former colleagues at Hestnes Fereira´ s atelier.

Already available for online viewing is Alexandra Saraiva´ s talk to the Education, Design and Practice Colloquium - Understanding skills in a Complex World, which took place in New York between 17 and 19 June, Hestnes Ferreira between European timelessness and North American classicism. Also to note that Alexandra Saraiva, with a Post-Doctoral Scholarship from FCT, as a researcher at ISCTE-IUL, with a doctoral thesis on the influence of Louis Kahn on Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, is supporting the handling process of this architect´ s collection at the Marques da Silva Foundation.

Opening tomorrow, 29 June, at Christ´ s Convent in Tomar, the exhibition "The Ethics of Things – Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, architecture 1953-2012". Organised in partnership with the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage – Christ´ s Convent and the Delegation of the Centre of the Order of Architects – Southern Regional Section, together with the Commission of the Festival of the Tabuleiros and the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar, the exhibition gives an overview of 18 representative designs from the various fields in which the architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral took part, from educational institutions to a range of equipment, through to individual and collective housing.

The Marques da Silva Foundation, the institution which will receive the professional archive of the Architect Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, congratulates the organisers of this initiative and looks forward to shortly being able to contribute to the study and dissemination of his work, namely by providing a vast body of documents for consultation and research.

The exhibition will be open to the public until 15 September, in the three rooms of the Novitiate, a space which has already hosted exhibition projects dedicated to Nuno Mateus and José Mateus (ARX Portugal), Souto de Moura, Carrilho da Graça.

Rui Américo Cardoso and Catarina Alves Costa returned yesterday to the exhibition space proposed by them for the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, together with Luís Viegas, and shared with the group of visitors the circumstances, and how “e-Announcing Fernando Lanhas: topics in his drawings” came about and was put together. Continuing for a while longer, the exhibition looks ahead to what the collection still being researched can offer, a set of documents with multiple meanings and whimsical forms of expression. But it is already offering us mostly unpublished testimonies of an architect with an urban consciousness, for whom the human informs and conforms, but above all with an enthusiasm to learn, to recognise and to show to others.
 
The exhibition will remain open to the public until 30 June.

Taking place today a guided visit by Luís Viegas, Rui Américo Cardoso and Catarina Alves Costa to the exhibition e-Announcing Fernando Lanhas: topics in his drawings. The exhibition, which will remain open to the public until 30 June, occupies the main floor of the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier. There are four documentary sections, with records of designs, details of construction and furniture, writings, photographs, drawings and maps representing the many interests of an extraordinary architect.

The visit begins at 1830 hrs.

Today, when the city of Porto prepares for another St John´ s Festival, is also the 127th anniversary of the birth of João Queiroz. The documentary memory project and the professional library of this architect strongly linked to the city of Porto are now to be analysed by Clara Pimenta do Vale who will soon be taking a fresh look at his work. An analysis which seeks to interpret it by establishing a dialogue with the 90 or so books contained in the collection donated in 2015 to the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 
As is already the case with the building Innovative house for all, located in the Rua da Boavista, a set of affordable dwellings designed in 1930, where João Queiroz ingeniously designed a system of access that ensures the independence of the six occupants, distributed over two floors, and with separate access both to the cellars and the back gardens. A constructed work that in itself explains his interest in books such as “Da propriedade horizontal ou por andares” [A single-storey property or one with floors] by Luiz da Cunha Gonçalves, or even from another perspective “Decorative Lighting” by the American Company John C. Virden and “Le Luminaire”, a book that presents lamps and other lighting fixtures belonging to the new and modern forms of electric lighting. But more of that another time. For now, we remember the anniversary and wish everyone a happy St John´ s Festival!

With "e-Announcing Fernando Lanhas: topics in his drawings", Luís Viegas, Rui Américo Cardoso and Catarina Alves Costa begin to uncover the thinking and the design process of an extraordinary architect, Fernando Lanhas. From the mapping of slow transformations to the designs for single family and multi-family housing, passing through the presentation of elements of other projects such as the museological ones or some unique writings and compositions, the first floor of the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier offers a first immersive look at the collection now donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation.

On 25 June, starting at 1830 hrs, a guided visit by the curators will take place to the exhibition which will remain open to the public until the end of June. To take part simply register in advance by email to fims@reit.up.pt or telephone 22 5518557. The maximum number of participants is 30 and the minimum is 10.

+ info

This is one of those rare exhibitions which add material to the study of architecture, and expose unpublished material to the light of museography, technology and current academic parameters.

José Pardal Pina, "The architectural exhibition as an exercise in research", in Umbigo

 

For those who have not yet had the opportunity to visit the exhibition open to the public at the Museum of Neo-Realism in Vila Franca de Xira, it will still be possible until 29 September, from Tuesday to Sunday.

Commissioned by Helena Barranha and organised by the Vila Franca de Xira Municipality in partnership with the Marques da Silva Foundation, the exhibition weaves the narrative of a long journey from the time of Alcino Soutinho´ s training, in Italy, to the outlining of the synthesis project for the Museum of Neo-Realism, opened 12 years ago. An expository route that shows the Museum´ s continuing experience of interpretation as an architectural typology, on the part of an architect who always claimed to like Museums. And among the many records of his practice, between trips and projects, there is the exhibition to demonstrate it.

Entrance is free.

+ info

The Marques da Silva Foundation, in full process of expansion and in a year marked by many events, has a plan underway for the renovation and reorganisation of its spaces. And this is the subject of the article by Sérgio Costa Andrade, published today in the Público newspaper, "Fundação Marques da Silva vai abrir o seu palacete à cidade" [Marques da Silva Foundation will open its mansion to the city].

Marta Llorente is an architect who is sensitive and attentive to the literary incidences of architecture. She is an architect who reads and who finds in literature a device for interpreting urban territory, a tool for thinking and acting. In the texts and poems that populate the personal universe of their authors she seeks the voice, the knowledge of place, the relationship of human beings with the spaces which they inhabit, whether they are distant in time or the peripheral and fragile corners of the great metropolises of our own times.

Yesterday, at the launch of “Poética Urbana” [Urban Poetics], in a session where we read Federico Garcia Lorca and Jaime Gil de Biedma, we talked about how the city offers itself to literature and how literature can transform our view of the city. From the author´s conversation with Fátima Vieira to António Guerreiro´s analysis, we spoke of the consubstantiality between city and poetry, of the city as prose of the world, of the reciprocity between text and city, of the urban landscapes identified with the authors who represented and recreated them, such as the Lisbon of Pessoa, the Dublin of Joyce and the Prague of Kafka.

This book by Marta Llorente begins with the emergence of the urban phenomenon in literature to highlight Cervantes, Baudelaire, Eliot, Lorca, Martín Santos, Jaime Gil de Biedma, on a journey that ends … or opens to the words of Javier Pérez Andújar. The interested reader can now find it in the Marques da Silva Foundation online shop. Happy reading!

More info on the book "Poética Urbana: A cidade da palavra literária " [Urban Poetics: the city of the literary word]

The image of the city, understood as a universal idea or as a a concrete place in the world, starting from urban literature, that is, from the set of texts which possess an aesthetic intention in relation to the urban context, is the point of departure for the author of this book. Marta Llorente, speaker at the 2016 Architect Marques da Silva Seminars, proposes in Poética urbana. A cidade da palavra literária [Urban poetics. The city of the literary word] to look at the relationships between literature and central inhabited space in the literary tradition in the Castilian language, while also establishing its relationship with European literature, with other literatures and cities which form the spaces where our lives and our culture have been unfolding.

The launch session, introduced by António Guerreiro and with the participation of Fátima Vieira, Chair of the Marques da Silva Foundation, will take place on 4 June, in the Main Hall of the Bolhão Palace.

+ info

The clock tower room, a space of singular constructive characteristics situated in the north turret of S. Bento Station, currently managed by The Passengers Hostel, proved itself the ideal place to host the launch of the second edition of "Estação S. Bento. [S. Bento Station.] Marques da Silva". There we talked about the timing of this book, of how these devices appear as palimpsests, as structures of continuity which preserve the depth of history and the questions which each period asks of itself and of them. Of how this Central Station, which was built when the train was the era´s principal means of transport, with obvious modernity, continues, in our own day, to be travelled through by around 11 million passengers per year, and to arouse new looks at its authors, José Marques da Silva and Jorge Colaço, its engineers, its builders; on the style and form of construction; on the aesthetic values which it reflects and the political contexts which intersected and acted upon it.

The book, through its three authors, contains the views of an historian who "lived" in close intimacy with José Marques da Silva, António Cardoso; of an architect who practises and studies architecture, Domingos Tavares; of a doctoral researcher on Jorge Colaço, Cláudia Emanuel. While one offers us an historical narrative, another adds to the reinterpretation of the design(s), giving space to an analysis of the 26,352 blue tiles of Jorge Colaço, in what was his third big commission and the first of other important works also carried out in the city of Porto.

Raquel Henriques da Silva introduced the book and moderated the authors´ participation. In the opening of the session, which took place on the 144th anniversary of the railway link with Minho, an historical scene represented in the blue tile decoration of the foyer, Luís Urbano and José Ribeiro contributed, representatives respectively of the Foundation and of Edições Afrontamento, co-publishing institutions, and also Paula Azevedo, representing IP Infraestruturas de Portugal, managing organisation of this location.

The book, lavishly illustrated, is now available for sale in the Marques da Silva Foundation online shop.

See photo album

Today, 20 May, at 1800 hrs, on the 144th anniversary of the first Porto-Braga railway link, an historical fact represented in the blue tile composition that decorates the foyer of S. Bento Station, the Marques da Silva Foundation and Edições Afrontamento will launch the second reformulated edition of the book "Estação S. Bento" [S. Bento Station].

The work will be introduced by Raquel Henriques da Silva. To open the session, where the three authors - António Cardoso, Domingos Tavares, Cláudia Emanuel - will be present, will be the representatives of the bodies involved in its organisation: Luís Urbano from the Marques da Silva Foundation and José Ribeiro of Edições Afrontamento, Paula Azevedo of IP Infraestruturas de Portugal, and Rosa Gomes of CP Comboios de Portugal.

It will take place in the Clock Tower Room of The Passenger Hostel, situated on the top floor of the north wing of the S. Bento Station building, via the entrance from the Station platform.

+ info

On International Museums Day, the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier opened its doors to offer a first look at the architectural collection of Fernando Lanhas. "e-Announcing Fernando Lanhas: Topics in his Drawings" is the exhibition which offers answers from the three curators, Luís Viegas, Rui Américo Cardoso and Catarina Alves Costa, to the challenge posed by the documentation donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation, to reinterpret the thought and design processes of a unique architect, through the constellation of areas that aroused his interest and action, through constant restlessness, through the desire to understand everything. The topics now e-announced, found in mostly unpublished records, confirm the richness of the donated documentation and point towards promising future lines of study and research on Fernando Lanhas.

The opening of the exhibition was thus the symbolic moment chosen to formalise the donation of this important documentary collection to the Marques da Silva Foundation, with Luís Urbano representing the Marques da Silva Foundation, and Pedro Lanhas representing Fernando Lanhas´s family, to proceed with the signature of the donation contract. On this occasion, the Foundation´s Vice-President spoke of the significance of this gesture in the context of the institution´s Documentation Centre and of the University of Porto, anticipated future developments which will soon be made public, and outlined, in general terms, the ongoing plan to expand the conditions of reception, treatment, study and dissemination of architectural collections. Pedro Lanhas shared his surprise and happiness in (re)discovering the work of his father, and Nuno Tasso de Sousa, in an evocation of Abel Salazar, praised the multiplicity of Fernando Lanhas´s interests as a distinctive sign and qualifier of his way of making architecture and of being in the world.

The exhibition can now be visited from Monday to Friday, between 1430 hrs and 1700 hrs.
 

See Album
 
+ info

"(...) It seems that nothing exists without having a reason. (...) Mankind always notice everything they observe. To repair is to attend to what awakens the intuition. (...) Mankind, as a phenomenon, continues itself in Art. (...) Mankind has not yet arrived. Art comes in the meantime."

Fernando Lanhas

"e-Announcing Fernando Lanhas: Topics in his Drawings" opens tomorrow, at 1600 hrs, in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier. From the proposal for a presentation of the mapping of the slow and capricious mutations observed and recorded by Fernando Lanhas, to a first overview of the elements which document his design process, in emphasising the insterstitial relationships between text and image, or the symbiotic relationship between abstract and figurative, Luís Viegas, Rui Américo Cardoso and Catarina Alves Costa trace the journey which explains to us Fernando Lanhas´s way of seeing.

It is a journey constructed from Fernando Lanhas´s architectural archive which will be formally donated tomorrow to the Marques da Silva Foundation, with the signature of the Donation Contract. A reading proposal which is not so much a point of arrival than a point of departure for new and continuing research.

Entrance is free. We are looking forward to seeing you!

+ info

We are sharing some photos illustrating the interest aroused by the opening of the exhibition "El carácter de la tradición en la arquitectura de Barney, Távora, Coderch"", on 10 May, at La Tertulia Museum in Calí.

The exhibition will remain open to the public until 18 August.

See photo album

We are publishing today Newsletter #38, highlighting the several exhibition projects, about to open or already underway, as well as the forthcoming launch of two new publications.
 

Read Newsletter #38 | Maio de 2019

To mark International Museums Day, the Marques da Silva Foundation will present, in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, curated by Luís Viegas, Rui Américo Cardoso and Catarina Alves Costa, the exhibition e-Announcing Fernando Lanhas: Topics in his Drawings.

This is a first presentation of materials belonging to the collection donated to the Foundation, representing, like constellations, the artist´s universe, intersecting some of the various fields in which he divided and multiplied his interests. This event, designed in the context of the research which is currently underway, will also be an opportunity to go ahead with the formalisation of the donation, through the signing of the Donation Contract, to take place between the representatives of the Foundation, Professors Fátima Vieira and Luís Urbano, with the representative of Fernando Lanhas´s heirs, the Engineer Pedro Lanhas.

As a statement led by topics designed by the author, Man of the line, letter and number, in the appreciation of what can be revealed, the purpose of this public celebration is to “offer a view” of the multiple contours and confrontations, between estrangement and restlessness, of a “proper” artistic practice of architecture. This event will also include the showing of the documentary “LH: To know how to see takes time”, by João Trabulo, made in 2001, which shows not only his biographical and artistic journey, but also includes moments from the assembly of the exhibition organised at the Serralves Museum in that same year.

The exhibition, which begins at 1600 hrs on 18 May, will remain open to the public until 18 June. It is also part of the programme for International Museums Day which in 2019 brings together the participation of more than 30 Museums with more than 70 activities open to the public.

+ info

On 20 May, introduced by the historian Raquel Henriques da Silva in the presence of the authors - António Cardoso, Domingos Tavares and Cláudia Emanuel - will be launched the second, reformulated edition of the book Estação S. Bento [S. Bento Station].

The session will take place in the Clock Tower Room of The Passenger Hostel, on the top floor of the north wing of the building.
 
Dedicated to the genesis of this project by Marques da Silva, the monograph "Estação S. Bento" by António Cardoso, published in 2007 and now sold out, has become through its narrative, the quality of its illustrations, documentation and graphics, a book of reference. Its reformulation, reflected in this second edition, which continues to ensure a high graphical standard, includes new texts by two additional authors: Domingos Tavares, with an analysis of the design(s), and Cláudia Emanuel, on the 20,000 blue tiles designed by Jorge Colaço to cover the entrance hall of the Station.

This is a publishing project carried out jointly by the Marques da Silva Foundation and Edições Afrontamento, which closes the programme to celebrate 150 years since the birth of Jorge Colaço.


+ info

Benjamín Barney (Colombia, 1941), Fernando Távora (Portugal, 1923-2005) and José Antonio Coderch (Spain, 1913-1984). Works by these three architects, originating from three separate countries and from three different generations, are the basis of this exhibition curated by Andrés Erazo Barco (University of San Buenaventura, Cali, Colombia), Antonio Armesto (UPC, Spain) and Manuel Augusto Mendes Soares (University of Porto, Portugal), which aims to reflect on the ethos, the very nature of Architecture.

In the context of the Exhibition, the work of Távora evokes the idea of permanent modernity, which he expounded so well in the Lição das Constantes, as the essential condition, sense and value of Architecture. There he explores his interest in Portuguese Architecture, erudite and popular, as a condition of modernity. For this purpose, he returns particularly to the design process of the House of Dr Ribeiro da Silva in Ofir, a contextualising design and work in a synthesis which extends to the Municipal Market of Feira, the Quinta da Conceição Tennis Pavilion, and the Cedro School in Gaia. The evocation values and highlights the meetings and practical intersections which Távora always sought and synthesised between his trips through CIAM and Portugal, particularly in the Minho region.

Following the meeting with Andres Erazo in 2018, the Marques da Silva Foundation has, from the beginning, been involved in the evolution of this project. An activity which has involved continuous and persistent work, with constant updating, which this Foundation develops in the promotion of Portuguese architecture, its study and research, namely concerning the person and work of reference Fernando Távora.

"The character of Tradition in the Architecture of Barney, Távora, Coderch" opens on 10 May, at La Tertulia Museum in Cali (Colombia), where it will continue until 18 August. The exhibition, which is itinerant in character, will travel to other destinations in South America, subsequently appearing in Portugal and Spain.

+ info

"Shortly put Um edifício, muitos museus: Alcino Soutinho e o Museu do Neo-Realismo rehearses the exhibition of architecture as an exercise in research, emphasizing different lines of research based on a name of Portuguese architecture that finds here the first step for an updated monograph. This is one of the few exhibitions that add subject matter to the study of architecture, exhibiting unpublished material under the light of the demands brought by the current museography, technology, and academic parameters."

"The exhibition of architecture as a research exercise" or José Pardal Pina´s look at the exhibition "One building, many museums: Alcino Soutinho and the Museum of Neo-Realism" published in Umbigo,  "The architecture exhibition as an exercise on research"

Miguel Ventura Terra was born in Seixas on 14 July 1866 and died in Lisbon on 30 April 1919, at the age of 53. He studied at the Porto Academy of Fine Arts and, like José Marques da Silva, obtained his Degree in Architecture from the French Government, having passed through the Atelier of Jules André and Victor Laloux. As an architect he was awarded many Valmor Prizes: 1903, 1906, 1909 and 1911.
In Lisbon he left his signature on buildings such as the Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital, the Pedro Nunes, Camões and Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho High Schools, the Lisbon Synagogue and several Mansions (for example the Mendonça Mansion) and single-family houses in the Rua Alexandre Herculano, including his own house. The reconstruction project for the Chamber of Deputies, destroyed by a fire in 1895, was by him, as was the requalification of the then Cortes Palace, today the S. Bento Palace. In the north, it suffices to mention the Santa Luzia Sanctuary in Viana do Castelo and the Esposende Hospital.
He took an active part in the struggle to defend the interests of architects and by affirming the status of the Architect. He was also a political activist engaged in the construction of a fairer social order, having joined the first republican formation of Lisbon City Council.
Raquel Henriques da Silva, in the Exhibition catalogue on his work, promoted by the Republican Assembly in 2009, emphasises that "as an architect and as a municipal leader, he was almost always thinking of the future". He also left in his will the express desire to create a pension fund to support those who dedicate themselves to the study of Fine Arts in the Lisbon and Porto Schools, to whom he gave the remainder of his inheritance.

He will be discussed today in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, at 1830 hrs, as part of the programme marking the centenary of his death.

+ info

A conversation and the screening of the documentary "Ventura Terra - Designing Modernity" represent the two parts of a programme which, on 30 April, seeks to mark the centenary of the death of Miguel Ventura Terra.

At 1830 hrs, in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, Alda Serra and José Tenreiro will present their views on this architect whose course of training, both personal and professional, coincided with that of José Marques da Silva. The session will be opened by the Chair of the Foundation, Fátima Vieira.

In the evening, in the recently opened Casa Comum Auditorium, at the U.Porto Rectory, the programme continues with the screening of the documentary “Ventura Terra - Designing modernity” with the involvement of the historian Ana Marques.

The initiative, organised by the Ventura Terra Association, is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation, the U. Porto Rectory and Lisbon City Council.

Entrance is free.

+ info

"By this time [in his passage through the School] there was a work by Spengler, The Decline of the West, which influenced me a lot, because it opened up to me a more universal vision of the world and other perspectives on History, but, above all, with regard to the way of relating things, which is sometimes more important than the things themselves. I began to realise how much the thought of a king can generate a palace, and I continue to see that those subterranean and complex relationships are often decisive"

Fernando Távora, Interview with Bernardo Pinto de Almeida, 1993, in Prólogo, [C-3]-51.

 
The books which architects gather together throughout their lives, bringing them together and keeping them close to their personal and professional sphere, and in particular in their Studios, represent privileged doors of access to revealing worlds of the singularities of their collectors, but also of so many other circumstances that dictate their presence in those universes. Of the many collections gathered and reunited at the Marques da Silva Foundation, libraries thus represents an important dimension in the interpretation of those architects and their references, allowing for many questions and intersections. There are already more than 13,000 titles, taking up about 250 linear metres, where an example of The Decline of the West can be found which, by way of an epigraph, today evokes World Book Day, recognising its formative role as a transmitter of culture and information.

"e-Announcing Fernando Lanhas: Topics in his drawings" offers a first opportunity to show the contents of the collection donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation. In the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier representative materials will be on display, as constellations of the artist´s universe at the intersection of the various fields in which he divided and multiplied his interests, between panoramic views and approaches, restlessness, awakenings, organisations and communications.

The exhibition, curated by the two professors and researchers Luís Viegas and Rui Américo Cardoso (DiPDArq/MDT/CEAU-FAUP), with Dr Catarina Alves Costa, marks the participation of the Marques da Silva Foundation in the International Museums Day programme. It opens on 18 May at 1600 hrs, remaining open to the public until 18 June.

+ info

The Renovation Study of the Ribeira-Barredo Urban Area dates from 1969, coordinated by Fernando Távora for the CMP. With its first commissioner Jorge Gigante, the C.R.U.A.R.B. was founded in 1974, moving forward with a programme to preserve this urban area, marked by the degradation and marginalisation of its populations, without altering the existing urban fabric. The scope of the renovation area was also widened in the light of the study carried out in 1969, extending it to the Fonte Taurina and Reboleira areas. The year 1974 also marked the creation of S.A.A.L., coordinated in the North by Margarida Coelho. Manuel Teles was then named as point of contact with the Council - F.F.H./S.A.A.L. The Report presented in 1976 by the group of architects involved in the Urban Renovation of the Ribeira-Barredo area was signed by Fernando Távora (consultant), António Madureira, Manuel Teles and Ricardo Figueiredo (C.R.U.A.R.B.), Álvaro Siza, B. Ferrão and Francisco Barata, Francisco Guedes and Rolando Torgo. However, the construction of the Aleixo district for the housing of disadvantaged populations, designed by Manuel Teles, was already a reality. It would also fall to Manuel Teles to present a proposal to intervene in Barredo´s Third Quarter, dating from 1981.

These are important moments in the deep transformation of the reality of urban Porto, documented in this architect´s collection, donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation in 2016, which are now becoming available for viewing.

Manuel Teles was born in Colimbra on 16 April 1936.

Notre-Dame de Paris

Fernando Távora, 9 September 1962

The Marques da Silva Foundation Newsletter is back with news of a set of initiatives where the focus is on exhibition projects. And there are three, in three different places, to evoke as many architects: in Vila Franca de Xira, with Alcino Soutinho; in Porto, at the Residence-Atelier, with Fernando Lanhas; and in Cali, in Colombia, with Fernando Távora.
 

Read Newsletter #37 | Abril de 2019

The guided visit to Franca de Xira goes beyond place and time. The purpose of the building, the Museum of Neo-Realism, and of the exhibition which is now taking place there, “One building, many museums”, opens up the possibility of approaching the project and Alcino Soutinho´s many forms for the architecture of museological spaces. And hence the journey, the training and the passage through Italy, to the approximately 17 designs which he developed. But the visit also allows us to note the impact of this building, opened in 2007 in the urban city centre. And to see what the present time has added, with the visit to the Public Library, the Word Factory, of Miguel Arruda, opened in 2014, and the layout of the riverfront, carried out by the Topiaris-Arquitetura Paisagista [Landscape Architecture] workshop.

Leading the visit, Helena Barranha, curator of the exhibition, and Pedro Nogueira, from the Miguel Arruda Arquitetos Associados workshop.
Come and join us!
The individual cost is €35.00 (lunch not included). Departure from Porto at 0800, return at 2000.

+ info

Today begins the 17th U.Porto Show, in the Largo Amor de Perdição, next to the Cordoaria Garden (opposite the old Relação jail). There will be 4 days to get to know the University of Porto´s study options. All the Faculties, Research Centres, Museums, UPTEC and Central Services will be present. Among them, U.Porto Publications, with around 120 titles available, including several books published by the Marques da Silva Foundation.

The Show´s programme also includes, between 1100 and 1300 on the 7th, an extraordinary session of the Didactic Workshop The Thinking Hand "The House of Space" (FLanhas, 1958/62), with input from Professors Luís Viegas, Rui Américo Cardoso and Assucena Miranda.

The Show will take place at the following times:
- Thursday and Friday: 1000 » 1900
- Saturday: 1100 » 2000
- Sunday: 1100 » 1900
 
+ info

In the apparent serenity of gardens that proudly announce the arrival of spring, gestures are made that will bring new life to the Foundation´s houses. Spaces must be emptied to receive new challenges, others are awaiting renovation, and others are already set to take on new functions. The Foundation is moving …

See + ptotos

To mark its participation in the International Day of Monuments and Sites on 13 April, earlier this year owing to the Easter season, the Marques da Silva Foundation, with the support of the Museum of Neo-Realism, will be organising the guided visit "Alcino Soutinho and the Museum of Neo-Realism: from design to building, from exhibition to city".

The visit will be guided by the architects Helena Barranha (curator of the exhibition "One building, many museums. Alcino Soutinho and the Museum of Neo-Realism") and Pedro Nogueira (from the workshop of Miguel Arruda Arquitetos Associados, author of the Word Factory project). The proposed itinerary, in addition to visiting the Museum and the Exhibition currently open to the public, includes a riverside walk and a visit to the Public Library/Word Factory.

With an individual cost of €35.00 (lunch not included), the visit can only take place with a minimum of 15 participants and a maximum of 35. Bookings can be made by email: fims@reit.up.pt, or by telephone: 22 55185587.

+ info

It is opportune to remember — on World Theatre Day — that in the Archive of the José Marques da Silva Foundation there exist, among many other documents relating to the theatres designed by that great architect, a set of small single sheets, with writings and drawings on both sides, with notes, observations, sketches and various records, but in which theatres have particular relevance. A brief study of these sheets of paper which, just like coins, have a head and a tail, with the absence of hierarchy in their faces, will shortly be published by the professor and architect Luís Soares Carneiro, unveiling the process as José Marques da Silva, regardless of the talent that he possessed, researched, studied and prepared himself to approach such a complex subject as the Theatre.

He arrived at the Foundation in 2016 to help us welcome Raúl Hestnes Ferreira and show the film about the House of Albarraque. He was then busy, amongst his many projects, with the publication of Fernando Távora´s lessons on General Theory and Spatial Organisation. This will now become a task for others. Architect, professor and tireless promoter of Architecture, perhaps the most active in Portugal during the last decades, he passed away yesterday, in Lisbon. The work developed in partnership with Egas Vieira, at the Contemporânea workshop, left its mark on the land. His Architecture was alive, optimistic and original. So also was his voice, critical, questioning, discursive, to whom today we offer our homage.

Between 28 and 30 November 2019, 60 years after the last CIAM, in Otterlo, the International Congress «Team Ten Farwest: Critical Revision of the Modern Movement in the Iberian Peninsula, 1953-1981» will take place in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, with the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation. With two preparatory meetings already having taken place (Guimarães, 2017 and Barcelona, 2018), Team Ten Farwest is a research project which has arisen as an Iberian answer to the Team 10 East project. With the aim of exploring the relationship between Portugal and Spain in the discussions which took place around the ideas, works and protagonists of Team 10, the proposal is to discuss the processes of reception and assimilation of the ideas of this group of architects in the critical revision of the modern movement in the Iberian Peninsula.

Issue number 10 of the magazine Joelho, «Team 10: Debate and Media in Portugal and Spain», coordinated by Nuno Correia, Pedro Baía, Carolina B. García Estévez, in line with the thematic focus of the Congress, the context in which its launch is expected to take place, aims to deepen the knowledge on the means of dissemination in the Iberian Peninsula of the ideas that arose from the Team 10 meetings which were held between 1953 and 1981.
 
From now until 17 June, the submission period will be open for articles for publication on the three central themes proposed: debate; media; protagonists.

For more information on the contents, conditions of admission and timetable, see Joelho 10.
 
In the photograph: Jerzy Soltan, Alfredo Viana de Lima, Oskar Hansen, Ralph Erskine, Kenzo Tange, at the last CIAM in Otterlo, in 1959 (ASP Archive, Warsaw). Please note that this photograph accompanied the ‘call for papers’ for the «Team 10 East» seminar (2013), and its sharing gave the opportunity to Pedro Baía to point out that the architect who remained unidentified was Viana de Lima.

Fernando Távora came across “Mensagem”, the “book” of his life, when he was 14 years old. Around the age of 20, when he made a point of recording a note of his own, next to an autograph of Fernando Nogueira Pessoa dating from 1909, he began what would become one of the most important individual collections of manuscripts, typescripts and printed material by this writer. Important for the richness of the documents carefully reunited throughout the decades, important for the web of relationships and affections that comes from it. Such as in the small piece of paper which Mário de Sá Carneiro addresses to Pessoa, once belonging to João Gaspar Simões, that Manuel Ferreira acquired and offered to Fernando Távora, today held at the Marques da Silva Foundation. Because poetry goes beyond words and extends to the nobility of gestures which enhances and perpetuates the action of those who perform them.

The children from the Nursery of the Folgosa School Centre (Levante da Maia Group) imagined the "House of Space". Last December they were at the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier to take part in their project with a physicist, Manuel Marques, an illustrator, Elsa Lé, a writer, José António Gomes, future architects, and Pedro Lanhas, son of Fernando Lanhas, the architect and author of "The House of Space", a text/essay developed between 1958 and 1962, now the starting point for this 3rd Didactic Workshop "The Thinking Hand". Tomorrow, 19 March, between 0900 hrs and 1300 hrs, will be the time to bring to fruition the four physical models (maquettes) representing their version of "The House of Space".

This initiative, a component in the research and teaching of the DiP DArq, under the guidance of Assucena Maria Miranda, Rui Américo Cardoso and Luís Viegas, will take place at FAUP, in room F. 2.2.

+ info

“One Building, Many Museums. Alcino Soutinho and the Museum of Neo-Realism” hosts a meeting of Urban Sketchers, with the participation of Eduardo Salavisa.
It takes place this Saturday, the 16th, between 1500 hrs and 1800 hrs, and includes a guided tour by the exhibition´s curator, Helena Barranha.

"The meeting is open to the general public, who will be able to join the group and take part in the session. The only condition is to bring your passion for drawing and something to do it with."

+ info Meeting

The S. João Theatre blows out the candles for its 99th birthday and the Marques da Silva Foundation shares, by way of a present, a longitudinal cross-section of the building, one of the many documents which record the way in which the Theatre was born, its design.

Developed between 1909 and 1918 by José Marques da Silva, the Theatre opened on 7 March 1920. As Luís Soares Carneiro, author of "A Estranheza da Estípite. Marques da Silva e o(s) Teatro(s) de S. João / The Strangeness of the Estipite. Marques da Silva and the S. João Theatre(s)" is keen to mention, Marques da Silva knew his public; knew his city; understood the desires and the needs of the bourgeoisie of Porto. He also knew how to perceive and interpret the "mix" between continuity and novelty that the city would comprehend and accept as a balance between a wistful backwards glance and the aspiration for innovation. 

A living entity, the TNSJ is preparing to celebrate 100 years. Congratulations!
 

+ info on the centenary programme

The collective housing building designed in the late 1950s for the then Rua da Friagem was the first work of a certain magnitude and urban expression developed by Alfredo Matos Ferreira. At the time he had not yet completed the Higher Architecture Course and was sharing workshop space with other colleagues (Alberto Neves, Álvaro Siza, António Menéres, Joaquim Sampaio and Luís Botelho Dias). Careful construction, internal organisation and an adjusted insertion into the area are characteristics highlighted by Álvaro Siza, who came to live there and who considers it to be a contribution to the architectural evolution then underway. Alfredo Matos Ferreira in his “Memória” recognises in this conceptual and constructive experience the character of a true professional internship. He would eventually install himself there, adopting it as a space for life and for work. In a premonitory gesture of still distant times, the Rua da Friagem would come to be renamed the Rua Arquiteto José Marques da Silva.

Alfredo Matos Ferreira was born on 1 March 1928.

Tomorrow, 23 February, at the Museum of Ceramics in Sacavém, a conference will take place entitled The presence of Jorge Colaço at the Loiça Factory in Sacavém. This initiative is part of the programme which since 2018 has been commemorating 150 years since the birth of Jorge Colaço, the author of the decoration of the atrium of S Bento Station.

In a country with centuries of blue tile tradition, the choice of this material is not surprising.  Its use has brought brightness, luminosity, delicacy and ease of cleaning to the space, reinforcing the monumental and artistic character of the architecture designed by José Marques da Silva. In total around 25,000 blue tiles were used from the Sacavém Factory, covering 551 square metres. Jorge Colaço began the task in 1905 of decorating this emblematic space, running through a programme of historical, religious, picturesque and customs subjects, in harmony with the dominant ideology and the characteristics of place, time and geography dictated by the railway company, finished off by a set of allegorical images. 

In terms of the creative process of these blue tiles, both the Archive of the Loiça Factory in Sacavém and the National Museum of Blue Tiles (MNAz) still hold a significant collection of records. The illustration, a photograph belonging to the Jorge Colaço collection at MNAz, documents the execution of the panel relating to Egas Moniz, when he presented himself, with his wife and son, to the king of Leão. 

The programme celebrating this anniversary, which brings together contributions from several institutions, including the Marques da Silva Foundation, will be rounded off with the publication of a new edition of the monograph Estação S. Bento. Marques da Silva, revised and expanded. In this new edition are included texts by António Cardoso, Domingos Tavares and Cláudia Emanuel. The launch will be announced shortly.
 

Other information

The critical monograph on the work of Ruy Jervis d´Athouguia (1917-2006) by Graça Correia, published by Edições Afrontamento, is now available for purchase from the Marques da Silva Foundation online store.

The book traces the career of this important modernist architect and includes a set of texts by several architects (Ana Tostões, Eduardo Souto Moura, Helio Pñon, João Luís Marques, João Pedro Falcão de Campos and João Manuel Santa Rita, José Fernando Gonçalves, Manuel Mateus, Nuno Brandão Costa, Ricardo Carvalho) who in the last twenty years have shared and promoted the study of his work, which is widespread today.

It should be noted that Ruy d´Athouguia contributed to the renovation of the city of Lisbon from the 1950s to the 1970s, namely with his intervention in the Bairro de Alvalade, where he designed several residential buildings and two schools, and with the design of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation headquarters in the Avenida de Berna, in collaboration with the architects Pedro Cid and Alberto Pessoa.
 

Purchase book