“Innovation Out of Doors – Civil Engineering on Display” is back. On 26 March at 1030 hrs, with the Engineer Hugo Marques as guest and the Architect Bárbara Rangel as moderator, we will talk about the Dragon Stadium, a work of great size and complexity, built between 2002 and 2004.

The session includes the screening of a documentary video on the work and a guided visit to areas of the stadium referred to during the session.

This initiative, for which the Marques da Silva Foundation is one of the supporting organisations, results from the partnership between the Department of Civil Engineering of FEUP, the Municipality of Porto (as part of the Porto Innovation Hub initiative), the University of Porto and Gaia Council.
 
+ info here

In 2013, as part of the research project Ruptura Silenciosa [Silent Break], thought of and coordinated by Luís Urbano, Manuel Graça Dias made A Encomenda [The Parcel], a short film based around one of the most cherished and recognised works of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, the Casa de Albarraque. In this small fiction, punctuated by humour and poetry through the interaction between the architect and a singular postman, we get to know and understand this house where there are echoes of a Scandinavian time and the measure of a life, that of José Gomes Ferreira, his father. In the course of filming, Manuel Graça Dias and Luís Urbano interviewed Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, a recording which can be viewed again in the exhibition and where, in addition to unveiling the Casa de Albarraque´s construction process, Hestnes Ferreira shares, in direct speech, memories of his career, from his training to his professional experience, including the journeys that have marked his life.

This second session of Meetings with has Luís Urbano as guest and the revisiting of these moments as a starting point. But 10 years have passed and the balançe to be made has certainly gained new meanings. As in all of the sessions in this cycle, moderation is by Alexandra Saraiva, chief curator of the exhibition HESTNES FERREIRA – FORM | MATERIAL | LIGHT. Entrance is free, subject only to the availability of space. It begins at 1530 hrs.
 
+ info here

Those who knew Fernando Lanhas more intimately knew that it was common to see him scribbling on the paper napkins that covered restaurant tables. And so it happened, on that day of 9 November 1977, with the note that we publish today. This same writing, undated, is transcribed in the "Poetic Anthology" of the book Fernando Lanhas: os sete rostos [Fernando Lanhas: the seven faces] (p. 91). The small fragment of tablecloth paper came to our knowledge through the son of the architect Octávio Lixa Filgueiras, Carlos Filgueiras, who found it among the papers that his father used to keep. It now allows us to date the published poem, but also to know that it is a curious testimony to one of the many lunches that these two architects used to arrange together. They were united by a friendship that began at the School of Fine Arts and continued throughout their lives, fed by common interests in the areas of ethnography and archaeology. At a time when "everybody" knew each other, elective affinities were chosen that allowed them to overcome the differences that also distinguished them. And between lunches or snacks at the house on Rua de S. Tomé where Lixa Filgueiras lived, also the author of a book of poetry, Requiem às Glórias do Mundo e outros poemas [Requiem to the Glories of the World and other poems], we could mention other names, such as Ângelo de Sousa, José Rodrigues (who would illustrate one of his short stories), Alberto Carneiro, José Forjaz, or even an unlikely General Eanes. On World Poetry Day, we are highlighting this poetic thought, lost and found on a piece of paper, collected in the spontaneity of a meeting between friends.
 

Thinking about "space" as a field of work in Architecture, from different disciplinary perspectives, is the guiding thread of the four conversations which make up the cycle Space, Writing and Thinking. Last Saturday, Nuno Camarneiro, scientist and writer, in dialogue with the organisers/moderators, Gonçalo Furtado and António Oliveira, spoke about the concept and its appropriation as a tool for understanding reality and simultaneously a mechanism of creation. Based on his journey, his written work and his reference authors, he addressed the multiple meanings of space: real, symbolic, imaginary, the game of mirrors which is always established between theoretical construction and the individual, social and political experience of the world. In this territory common to literature and architecture, with their intersections and transpositions, he compared the fictional freedom of writing and its anticipatory potential for other realities, and even the synaesthetic exercise of those who read, with the constraints inherent in its objectification, to the design process of the architect, even when it remains idealised. There was talk of memory and the models that filter our perception of space and the way in which this space, in its different scales, dictates our lives, not forgetting to mention the recent experience of confinement and the globalisation of the imaginary that marks our time.
 
In the next session, in April, with Daniel Tércio, the focus will be on the relationship between the body, movement and space.

See photo album of the session here
 

Nuno Camarneiro is the first guest in the Cycle "Space, Writing and Thinking", a set of four conversations which seek to address, in a multidisciplinary perspective, the concept of "space".

With THE SPACE OF WRITING as his theme, Nuno Camarneiro thus defines the starting point for the conversation: “A story is people in a place for some time”, as begins the novel "Underneath Some Sky", which I wrote in 2011. Eleven years later I still see myself in this statement and I give equal value to the three necessary premises for a story to happen: People, places and time. The place is the stage where the voices, the actions and the drama can happen, where they confront each other and show themselves, in a difficult and fruitful dialogue between exterior and interior. So let´s talk about these places and the multiple and complex geographies of fiction.”

The conversation will be moderated by Gonçalo Furtado and António Oliveira, authors and organisers of this initiative which is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto.

All of the sessions of this Cycle take place at the Marques da Silva Foundation. Starting at 1500 hrs, access is free, subject only to the availability of space.

+ info here

In the week when a new cycle begins, «Space, Writing and Thinking», with Nuno Camarneiro as guest, and the second edition of the parallel cycle to the exhibition «Hestnes Ferreira - Form | Material | Light» is being prepared, a «Meeting with Luis Urbano», the Marques da Silva Foundation´s March edition of the Newsletter is published. Read here
 

It was the year 1805 when the Real Companhia Velha decided to buy the house which it had rented since 1761 in the Flores Street, in the city of Porto, from Manoel de Figueiroa Pinto. And there it remained until 1961. A few years later, Silva Reis, its President at the time, commissioned the two architects Manuel Marques de Aguiar and Luiz Botelho Dias to design the transformation of the building, which was entering a visible state of degradation, into an Inn. The challenge was great, both because of its central location and because of the programme to be carried out. Taking care of the prestige inherent in the institution and guaranteeing the creation of comforting and inviting surroundings, it was necessary to recover and enhance the existing property and ensure its transition into a new building, destined to accommodate rooms and services. The solutions could not compromise either respect for the old building´s design or the effect of responding to new functions. Principles which are expressed in the descriptive record of January 1969. The design for the "Inn of the Porto Wine", developed in the office on the Sá da Bandeira Street, stretched over time, with the two architects involved in its preservation and detailing. The documentation now archived at the Marques da Silva Foundation, from which the now published perspective was taken, signed by Luiz Botelho Dias and dated August 1974, confirms this. It would not, however, be built. The Casa da Companhia, no. 69 in Flores Street, survived, gained new tenants and has just been renovated, fulfilling itself as a luxury hotel. But this design process is part of the building´s history, and of the history of the imagined city. The one that does not correspond to what exists tells us what could have been.

Luiz Botelho Dias was born on 11 March 1929.
 

The Space, Writing and Thinking cycle, organised by Professor Gonçalo Furtado and the Architect António Oliveira, consists of four conversations that intend to address, from a multidisciplinary perspective, the concept of "space". The writers and philosophers Nuno Camarneiro, Daniel Tércio, José Gil/Ana Godinho Gil and Maria Filomena Molder responded to the challenge and, between March and June, will come to the Marques da Silva Foundation to talk about the place that the concept occupies in their writing and thinking professions, about how space is constructed by mankind and, simultaneously, how it is built. The conversations, moderated by the Cycle organisers, are open to the general public, who will also be invited to participate.
 

The first conversation takes place on the 18th, with Nuno Camarneiro.
 

This Cycle is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto.
 

+ info here

From the neorealist reconstruction in postwar Italy, through the "guided settlements" in Spain, to the SAAL experience in Portugal, the exhibition The City in Dispute, curated by María García Ruiz and Moisés Puente, gives a perspectival look at social housing in Southern Europe, showing how political activities intersecting with architectural practice between 1949 and 1976 are examined.
 
In this exhibition, which is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation, a highlight will be Sergio Fernandez´s design for the SAAL in Bairro do Leal (Porto, 1974-76), as well as other documentation from the archives of Alcino Soutinho and Alfredo Matos Ferreira.
 
The city in Dispute opens tomorrow, 3 March, at the Galeria La Virreina in Barcelona, and will remain open to the public until 4 June this year.
 

+ info: www.ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lavirreina.es
 

The renovation of the convent of Santa Marinha da Costa in Guimarães is one of the projects which, for its size and complexity, Alfredo Matos Ferreira highlights from the period which he considers to have been the most interesting of his long career, during which he collaborated with Fernando Távora and when, between these two architects, in addition to a firm friendship, there was established a "great concordance in how to approach the problems of Architecture and Urbanism" (Memória, p. 217).
 
In converting the old and run-down convent building into a Pousada, it was necessary to articulate pre-existing conditions with contemporary construction processes and introduce comfort-related infrastructure, along with the design of new spaces built from scratch. It fell to Alfredo Matos Ferreira to design the Swimming Pool, a place created for relaxing and which should fulfill a relatively simple programme: a swimming pool for adults and another for children, changing rooms, bathhouses and a small bar, as well as a space for treating the spring water which supplied the convent. Access to the space would be possible either through the grand staircase connecting the Convent to the circular tank built by the friars in the 18th century, or through an avenue of linden trees that would also allow motorised traffic. The solution proposed by Matos Ferreira, asserting itself through its geometry, was developed on two floors, a platform to organise all the outdoor or covered spaces, and a semi-underground floor, for the support and installation of water treatment machinery. But only a lower floor, to ensure this last function, would be built (Memória, p. 224).
 
Alfredo Matos Ferreira was born on 1 March 1928.
 

In what was the first meeting organised as part of the exhibition HESTNES FERREIRA - Form | Material | Light, Ana Tostões came to the Marques da Silva Foundation to speak to us about the long and adventurous life of the architect Raúl Hestnes Ferreira. At first the focus was on the person, the particular young man, the Nordic attraction, the discovery of the Kahnian universe; as well as the identification of what is distinctive about this architect´s way of designing: the use of charcoal, the geometries in space, the subtlety of the work on light, the grandeur, the constructive rigour and respect for the nature of the materials. From the extensive work of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, Ana Tostões highlighted Albarraque, a perfect work, and also made a point of mentioning the intelligent glance of this architect at the recent past of Portuguese architecture, right from the start in his approaches to the work of Cassiano Branco and Keil do Amaral, remembering that Hestnes Ferreira was part of a generation of architects who were politically committed and aware of their role. This was followed by a visit to the exhibition guided by a stimulating conversation with the curator Alexandra Saraiva throughout the exhibition.

The next meeting is on the 25th of this month, with Bernardo Miranda.

See photo album here
 

"Meetings with" is the title that generically groups together a set of five sessions designed in the context of the exhibition HESTNES FERREIRA - Form | Material | Light. And if the curators Alexandra Saraiva, Patrícia Bento d´Almeida and Paulo Tormenta Pinto propose a reading of the work of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira from his working process, between the design and the built experience, the activities now programmed have the aim of deepening and putting into discussion other views, other possible analytical perspectives on this architect´s broad and unusual field of work.
 
The first guest in this cycle will be Ana Tostões, architect, researcher, curator and full professor, author (among many other publications) of the book Idade Maior, Cultura e Tecnologia na Arquitectura Moderna Portuguesa [Older Age, Culture and Technology in Modern Portuguese Architecture] (FAUP, 2015) who, on Saturday 25th, at 15:30, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, will give a brief introduction to the figure of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, followed by a guided visit to the exhibition.
 
Access to the sessions is free, depending only on the availability of space.
 
+ info: here
 

The Marques da Silva Foundation will be closed this Tuesday, 21 February, Carnival day. Visiting hours to the exhibitions and assistance for researchers will be resumed the very next day.

We wish everyone a good Carnival!
 

The Architecture Circle of Oeiras will extend the exhibition "Fernão Simões de Carvalho - The Modern Brutalist" until 18 March, the month when it will still be possible to take part in two new guided visits:
 
/ 02 March – Guided Visit to the Architect´s House in Queijas (two times available – 15:00 and 16:00)
/ 08 March – Guided Visit to the Exhibition (at 18:00)
 
Bookings via email circulodaarquitetura@oeiras.pt.
 
+ info: www.oeiras.pt
 

It was in a festive atmosphere that the exhibition HESTNES FERREIRA - FORM | MATERIAL | LIGHT opened its doors and introduced another way of interpreting the career and work of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira. But before that, in the contributions of Luís Urbano and the main curator, Alexandra Saraiva, reference was made to the transfer of his archive from the Graça studio to the Marques da Silva Foundation, the research that preceded this new exhibition project, and all that has been done for the documentary record of work of this exceptional architect and teacher to continue to be seen in the present time, continue to be studied, continue to be communicated. The exhibition is there, waiting for you.

Open for visiting at the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier from Monday to Saturday, between 14:00 and 18:00.
 

Final assembly phase of the new exhibition.
HESTNES FERREIRA - FORM | MATERIAL | LIGHT opens tomorrow, at 16:00, at the Marques da Silva Foundation.
We are looking forward to seeing you!
 

When one thinks of the architectural work of Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, one immediately associates it with the designs developed for the Universities of Covilhã, Guimarães and Bragança, the housing plan for the Pego Longo District, the Castelo School, the "mud house", the houses on Travessa da Oliveira, Ribeiro Sanches and the Amoreiras in Lisbon, Gallery 111 and the renovation of the Taborda Theatre, some of his best loved projects, not to mention the Bloco das Águas Livres housing complex. But along the way there have been many other examples of his working process and the ethical, aesthetic and human values that guide him. It is in the compromise between art and constructive technique, between the response to a precise function and the meaning for the community where his works take shape, that his actions and the consistency of his work are based. Even when he takes on the role of team coordinator, as in the case of the Quinta das Conchas metro station, opened in 2004. The architecture of this Lisbon metropolitan station, part of the Yellow Line and which came to be called Quinta do Lambert and Quinta das Moucas before definitively taking on the current name of Quinta das Conchas, is thus the creation of a collective made up of Mário Crespo, João Gomes and Anabela João, coordinated by Bartolomeu Costa Cabral. The space also includes interventions by the visual artists Joana Rosa and Manuel Baptista.
 
It is a design where influences echo from Foster´s metro for Bilbao, developed from the place, with and for the people. What has been achieved is the result of a close working relationship and sharing between architects, the technical services team of the Lisbon metro and the visual artists involved. And, once again, one can feel the strength and respect for the materials, the space of freedom of choice that Bartolomeu Costa Cabral has always commanded, the safeguarding of the user´s needs, the search for beauty. For that reason it is also not surprising that, together with the documentary record of this project, today part of the Marques da Silva Foundation archive, study models are still preserved for one of the elements that give this station its identity, the ribbed blue tile that covers an important part of the wall surfaces.
 
Bartolomeu Costa Cabral was born on 8 February 1929. He is 94 today and continues to design. Congratulations, Mr Architect!
 

When Alexandre Alves Costa looks back to the years when he became an architect, between the School of Fine Arts and his internship at LNEC, between Porto and Lisbon, between Távora or Siza and Nuno Portas, he does not hesitate to assert his sense of belonging to the generation of heterodoxy, Eduardo Lourenço being its great ideologue. And when we listen to him, he gives us back a very personal reading of that decade, the 1960s in Portugal, with a conscious search for the apprehension of the "real" reality of the country that was and is his, allied to an unbreakable desire for change, for the construction of a new era. In that re with the past, he gradually recognised the existence of a sunny side, of that space of freedom inhabited by a feeling of hope that cuts across, beyond architecture, to the realms of poetry and cinema. They are references and memories interpreted from his own experience, sensitivity and idiosyncrasy, in an enchantment for the world in the richness of its globality.
 
Alexandre Alves Costa was born on 2 February 1939. To mark his birthday, the Marques da Silva Foundation retrieved the interview given to Luís Urbano in 2014, as part of the CIRCA 1963 project. As he himself refers to the purpose of the Journey to the Beginning of the World by Manoel de Oliveira, another of his great references, in the words of Eduardo Lourenço "we are not reading the past, we are always reading the future". Congratulations, Mr Architect!
 
See here: O lado solar. Alexandre Alves Costa (JackBackPack, 2014)

The first Newsletter of 2023 opens with the announcement of a new exhibition starting at the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier: HESTNES FERREIRA - Form | Material | Light, while at the Lopes Martins Mansion the exhibition MANUEL BOTELHO CARTOGRAPHY: Work and Design continues. But there is so much more taking place.

Read here
 

Dell´organizzazione dello spazio, the translation into Italian by Carlotta Torricelli of Fernando Távora´s original text, a book published by Editora Nottetempo with the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation and Fernando Távora´s family, will be one of the topics under discussion at the Fondazione Corrente Architecture Meetings.
The session dedicated to the book, the first of this cycle of conversations and also the first public presentation of the book to take place in Milan, begins at 18:00 and participants will be, in addition to Carlotta Torricelli, translator and author of the book´s introductory note, Gregorio Carboni Maestri, Giovanni Muzio and Stefano Perego.
With free access, these meetings are coordinated by Jacopo Muzio Treccani.

+ info: www.fondazionecorrente.org
 

The exhibition Fernão Simões de Carvalho: Architecture 1960-1999 / The Modern Brutalist, open to the public at the Architecture Circle in Oeiras, is entering its last days, but on 2 February it will still be possible to attend a round table where various themes highlighted in this exhibition project will be discussed. Taking part on the panel are Beatriz Serrazina, Filomena Espírito Santo, Hugo Farias, Inês Lima Rodrigues, Joana Basto Malheiro, João Carrola Gomes, Maria Manuela da Fonte and Michel Toussaint. The session, with free entry, begins at 18:00 and to take part just register via email circulodaarquitetura@oeiras.pt.
 
See information panel
+ info: www.oeiras.pt
 

Adopting a circular shape for house design is certainly not a common gesture, and even more unusual if we are referring to one of the central areas of the city of Porto. But at the end of the 1940s, more precisely in 1949, this is what happened when the architects David Moreira da Silva and Maria José Marques da Silva, in addition to previous projects, worked on the possibility of adapting the tower of the "Palácio do Comércio" into a house. There is nothing to allow us to know whether such a decision was the result of the client´s wishes or a proposal by the architects. In any case, the 7th and 8th floors, connected internally by a spiral staircase, became a living space that still today distinguishes the south end of the main facade, at the intersection between the Rua Sá da Bandeira and the Rua Fernandes Tomás, asserting itself as one of the most identifying and iconic elements of the entire building.
 
The "Palácio do Comércio", a project on which David Moreira da Silva started working in 1940, was commissioned by the firm Ferreira & Filhos Lda and, from the very beginning, in line with the city council´s aspirations, it aimed to be "great". "Conceived in such a way as to be able to contribute, to a high degree, to the full aesthetic and functional enhancement of the city´s central nucleus, this building, which both for its privileged situation, great composition, unusual dimensions, and for the noble and rich materials with which it will be built, cannot fail to be, in the future, a striking, expressive and dignifying STANDARD of our time – thanks to the great ability to achieve and the remarkable and commendable spirit of the neighbourhood and the devotion of the firm which intends to build it [...]." (descriptive memorandum of 1946)
 
In response to a Marques da Silva Foundation initiative, the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage is in the process of classifying this building.
 
David Moreira da Silva was born in Maia on 28 January 1909.
 

Opening on 2 February at 18:00, at the Pimenta Palace, will be the exhibition Housing Policies in Lisbon: from Monarchy to Democracy. Promoted by the Lisbon Municipal Archive and with scientific curation by Gonçalo Antunes, the exhibition presents the urban results of housing policies implemented in this city over the last 200 years, highlighting the different practices and concepts of those policies, in particular in relation to the options of architecture, morphology, urban design, recipients and location.
 
In this reflection on the evolution of housing policies and the way in which they contributed to the construction of the urban landscape of Lisbon, it would not be possible to ignore the Fonsecas and Calçada District, by Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, developed within the scope of SAAL for the 25 April Cooperatives and People´s .
 
The exhibition, which is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation, can be visited until 30 April this year, from Tuesday to Sunday, between 10:00 and 18:00. During this period there will be three visits led by the scientific curator on 11 February, 11 March and 15 April.

See poster
+ info at: www.museudelisboa.pt and www.arquivomunicipal.lisboa.pt

HESTNES FERREIRA -  Form | Material | Light, the next exhibition to be hosted in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, curated by Alexandra Saraiva, Patrícia Bento d´Almeida and Paulo Tormenta Pinto, questions the architecture of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira (1931-2018) from the perspective of the dialogue which can be established between the built experience and the memory of the design.

From the archived documentation at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the curators have selected 13 works carried out by this architect between the end of the 1960s and the first decade of the 21st century, and have outlined an itinerary that proposes a different understanding of the singularity of Hestnes Ferreira´s working process and the significance of his architecture. The reading now proposed comes to us still guided by a brief incursion through his training period as an architect, and by the screening of some videos. A programme of parallel activities will further deepen and expand the paths opened by the Exhibition.

HESTNES FERREIRA - Form | Material | Light is scheduled to open on 11 February at 16:00 in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier. The moment will be marked by a guided tour by the curators. On that day, entrance is free.
 
This exhibition project, an initiative of the Marques da Silva Foundation, arises from a long, continuing process of cataloguing, treatment and digitisation of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira´s archive, donated to this Foundation in 2018, and is supported by the architect Raúl Hestnes Ferreira´s family, the Iscte University Institute of Lisbon, its research unit DINÂMIA´CET-Iscte, the Centre for Studies on Socioeconomic Change and Territory, and the Science and Technology Foundation (SFRH/BPD/ 111869/2015; 2021.02417.CEECIND; SFRH/BPD/117167/2016).
 
+ information here


 

The exhibition Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design will remain open until 6 May, the date on which a closing session has also been rescheduled, involving the launch of a monograph with a retrospective of the career of this architect and a round table attended by Jorge Figueira (moderator), Carlos Machado, Manuel Mendes, Maria José Casanova and Pedro Bandeira. With free entrance (subject to the availability of space), the session will begin at 16:00 at the Marques da Silva Foundation. Until then, the Exhibition remains open to the public during the usual hours: from Monday to Saturday, between 14:00 and 18:00.
 
Curated by António Neves, Bruno Baldaia, Carlos Maia, Duarte Belo and Luís Urbano, the Exhibition Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design is the result of a partnership between the Marques da Silva Foundation (FIMS), the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto (FAUP), the Centre for Architecture and Urbanism Studies/FAUP (CEAU/FAUP), the Laboratory of Landscape, Heritage and Territory (Lab2PT) and the School of Architecture, Art and Design, University of Minho (EAAD-UM); it is supported by the North Regional Section of the Order of Architects (OA-SRN).

The book Manuel Botelho, work and design, to be published by the Circo de Ideias, is edited by António Neves, Bruno Baldaia and Carlos Maia, with Pedro Baía as editorial coordinator. This publication is supported by all the partner institutions of the project which, since January 2022, has been carrying out a varied set of açtivities to publicise the production and unique career of Manuel Botelho.


+ info here
 

It could be a simple group photograph, gathered in the centre of the city of Viana do Castelo, following with evident attention the words of the guide who shifts his focus to a point that we cannot see.  But we also know that the guide is the architect Carlos Carvalho Dias and that it was taken on 6 September 1984, during the first day of the trip to the North of Portugal and Santiago de Compostela organised in the context of the 20th Congress of the International Association of Urbanists, which took place in Braga between the 1st and 5th of that September. The photograph is held in a file belonging to the archive of Carlos Carvalho Dias, at the time Vice-President of ISOCARP (International Society of City and Regional Planners), an institution of which he was one of the founders. The Congress, chaired by Derek Lyddon, had as its theme "The implementation of Planning in small cities" and was attended by more than 150 international participants to present and discuss 16 case studies: small and medium-sized cities, mostly European, but also located in Brazil, Peru, Morocco and India. The Portuguese example was precisely the city of Braga, for which the Urbanisation Plan had been designed by Carlos Carvalho Dias and Lúcio Miranda from the early 1970s, and the later Plan, now in force, by Manuel Fernandes de Sá. At the time Fernandes Ribeiro also presented the experience of urban renewal carried out by the CRUARB, that is, in the Ribeira-Barredo area of Porto. The handing over of the presidency of the Association to a Portuguese representative, Manuel da Costa Lobo, was another point in the programme. Carlos Carvalho Dias´s dossier, now available at the Marques da Silva Foundation, includes information on the preparatory work, reports which summarise the main conclusions of the Congress, and other reports, including documents that testify to a general feeling of approval and satisfaction regarding the work developed by the organisers, in particular by Carlos Carvalho Dias.

Carlos Carvalho Dias was born in Viana do Castelo on 14 January 1929. He is 94 today. Congratulations, Mr Architect!
 

Domingos Ferreira Pinto de Faria received his Architect´s Degree from the Porto School of Fine Arts in 1965, having presented himself to the Competition with a Renovation Plan for a Block next to the Quinta do Covelo, bound by the streets Faria de Guimarães, Covelo, Campo Lindo and Monte de S. João. Subject and development were soon taken on by him as a result of the experience gained during his time at the Urban Planning Office of Porto City Council, where he would begin his professional activities in 1957, and where he would remain until 1970. During that period, he collaborated on the preparation of the City of Porto Master Plan guided by Robert Auzelle and on the team that aimed to extinguish the "urban islands". From that period comes the photograph which we are publishing today and with which we are marking the day of his birth, 12 January 1934.
 

In the context of the exhibition "Fernão Simões de Carvalho: Architecture 1960-1999 / The Modern Brutalist", open to the public at the Architecture Circle in Oeiras, a parallel programme has been planned which, with guided tours and a round table, brings together to the exhibition project other readings about the meaning and feeling of the work developed by this architect and urban planner.
 
So tomorrow, the 12th, Inês Lima Rodrigues, an architect and researcher who has not only been dedicating herself to the study and recognition of the work of the architect Fernão Simões de Carvalho, but has also been mediator in the process of transferring his archive to the Marques da Silva Foundation, will give a guided tour of the Exhibition. The tour begins at 18:00 and participation depends simply on prior booking via circulodaarquitetura@oeiras.pt.
 
This will be followed, on 26 January, by a guided tour by the architect Hugo Faria to the House of Architecture in Queijas and, on 2 February, a round table attended by Beatriz Serrazina Hugo Farias, Maria Manuela da Fonte, Michel Toussaint, João Carrola Gomes, Inês Lima Rodrigues and Joana Basto Malheiro.
 
The exhibition, with free entry, can be visited until 18 February, from Tuesday to Saturday, between 14:00 and 19:00.
 

The Northern Regional Directorate of Culture has been publicising the partner institutions of the Portuguese Network of Contemporary Art - North, including the Marques da Silva Foundation.

In the entry dedicated to this Foundation you can access information about who we are and what we do, visit the highlighted multimedia exhibition, learn a little about the history of the spaces where it is located and find out who the architect José Marques da Silva was.

Visit here
 

And the first prize of the 1st edition of the João Álvaro Rocha Municipal Architecture Prize* was awarded to a design by the architects José Carlos Loureiro, Luís Pinheiro Loureiro, José Manuel Loureiro: ISMAI – Stadium, a project made with the community in mind.

As mentioned in the specification: "An extensive empty space separated the two extremes of the academic campus, limited to the East by the metro line [...] Now schoolchildren play football, young university students practise and learn to teach the sport, while others can watch [...]. The objective has been accomplished".
 
The jury for this first edition consisted of the engineer António Silva Tiago, Mayor of the Municipality of Maia; by the architects José Gigante, representing APJAR; Teresa Fonseca, nominated by the Order of Architects; José Miguel Rodrigues and the curator José Maia, for the Municipality of Maia, also decided to award an Honourable Mention to SISMA – Industrial Unit of Maia, designed by the architect Sandra Maria Machado Ferreira Garcia.
 
The competition projects are on display until 31 January at the D. Manuel II Gallery in the Maia Forum.

 
* This Prize, sponsored by the Municipality of Maia and organised by APJAR - Association Pro-Architecture João Álvaro Rocha, is intended for the appreciation, recognition and promotion of Buildings and Public Spaces located in the Municipality of Maia.
 

The name "Gonçalo Cristovão" has long ceased to evoke the memory of a specific person, to designate a precise urban location in the city of Porto. The opening of the street that "from Campo da Regeneração will lead into Santo António do Bonjardim", according to the City Council Book of 1838, stems from the offer of the land to the Municipality by the heirs of Gonçalo Cristóvão Teixeira Coelho Sá Melo Pinto de Mesquita, owner of the Quinta do Bonjardim, from whom the Council decided, at the beginning of the century, to buy "16 plumes of water" for public use. Since then, the new Rua has been taking shape, and with more and more inhabitants and users it has been continuously expanding and transforming. The image that we have of it today, as a public thoroughfare, was mostly consolidated in the mid-20th century, being one of the points of intervention envisaged in the Plan of Antão de Almeida Garrett and, above all, by Robert Auzelle. Right on the corner of the Rua do Bonjardim is one of its most iconic buildings, designed by Manuel Marques de Aguiar. The project began in the late 1950s, in response to a commission from Mário dos Santos Figueiredo, but the way in which Marques de Aguiar was to develop it was already closely linked to Auzelle´s proposals, which he attributed to this Porto architect, his student of previous years in Paris, the coordination of that axis of circulation. And hence the importance that Marques de Aguiar gave to the volumetry of the structure to be built, evidenced in various sketches belonging to the design process of what would eventually become known as the "Figueiredo Building". The implantation and final design of the facade, with its characteristic central tower and entrance gallery, would end up falling short of what had been initially imagined and desired by Manuel Marques de Aguiar, either because the client pushed for greater density of occupation, or because of the surroundings being incapable of becoming a "boulevard", as it came to be equated. However, together with the adjoining building, the "Lar Familiar" [Family Home], also designed by this architect, it continues to confer an identity of its own on this part of the city and to demonstrate its constructive solidity and full functionality as a space dedicated to services, commerce and housing.
 
Manuel Marques de Aguiar was born in Porto on 8 January 1927.
 

José Adriano Anselmo Vaz trained in Architecture at the Porto School of Fine Arts in 1964, and in that same year was admitted to Viana de Lima´s workshop. Visiting Paris the following year reinforced his interest in urban planning, anticipating what would become a dominant area of his professional career from the 1970s onwards, as an architect for the Council of Sintra and later of Lisbon. Here, among other projects, he took on the coordination of the urban planning of the eastern zone and the urbanisation plan of the area surrounding Expo 98, as the Council´s technical representative, both in the promotion of Expo 98 and in the urban design of the area selected for its location and respective accessibility. Since his training he has continued his activities as a liberal professional. He has spoken and written on many of the projects in which he has been involved, and has supervised theses, internships and works of Portuguese and overseas students. In July 2022 he donated his professional library to the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 
Anselmo Vaz was born on 4 January 1940. Congratulations, Mr Architect!
 
Picture: Anselmo Vaz, riverfront study, Lisbon, n.d.
 

The exhibition "Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design" reopens to the public today, returning to the usual schedule, from Monday to Saturday, between 14:00 and 18:00 (last admission at 17:30).

Come to the Marques da Silva Foundation and follow the "red thread" that will lead you through the various coordinates that trace the space of the life and work of Manuel Botelho.
 
+ info here
 

The Marques da Silva Foundation wishes everyone a Good 2023!
 
Picture: Fonsecas and Calçada district, 2017. Design by Raúl Hestnes Ferreira. Photograph by Luís Pavão.
 

And from the renovation project of the Batalha Cinema, by Atelier 15, came the drawing that forms the Marques da Silva Foundation Happy Holidays Card. With this we wish everyone a happy Christmas season and a good 2023.

We take this opportunity to inform you that the Marques da Silva Foundation is closed to the public between 22 December and 2 January inclusive, resuming its activities on 3 January.
   

“Fertile Futures” is the project selected to represent Portugal at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennial, taking place between 20 May and 26 November 2023. Presented by Andreia Garcia (Architectural Affairs) and co-curated by Diogo Aguiar and Ana Neiva, it will focus on seven distinct hydrogeographies deeply marked by anthropocentric action: Tâmega Basin, International Douro, Middle Tagus, Alqueva Albufeira, River Mira, Lagoon of the Seven Cities and Madeira Riversides. The project includes commissioning young architects, in collaboration with specialists from other areas of knowledge, to present propositional models for a more sustainable, healthy and equitable tomorrow, in non-hierarchical cooperation between disciplines, generations and species.
 
According to the Directorate-General for Arts, the Portuguese representation, which will be installed at the Franchetti Palazzo, "will defend, between Portugal and Venice, the pertinence of the contribution of Architecture in the redesign of the decarbonised, decolonised and collaborative future, responding directly to the call of Lesley Lokko [Scottish-Ghanaian architect and writer, curator-general of this Biennial], starting from an apprenticeship which summons the African context, like others who have long witnessed extreme climatic conditions."
 
The Marques da Silva Foundation is part of the body of partner organisations and supporters of this project, chosen by the jury made up of Paulo Carretas (of DGARTES), and specialists Joaquim Moreno, Isabel Ortins Simões Raposo, Julia Albani and Nuno Grande.

 
photo: Venice, Cavalli-Franchetti Palazzo, G. Massiot & Cie., 1910.
 

Opened on 23 September at the Ridotto Gallery in Cesena (Italy), the exhibition I viaggi di Fernando Távora is about to end. To mark the closing, a final session is scheduled for tomorrow, 10 December, with the participation of Elisabetta Bovero, Luísa Távora, Antonio Esposito and Giorgio Liverani, followed by a visit to the exhibition.

See poster here
 

Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design is the exhibition which is living temporarily in the Marques da Silva Foundation Mansion. A project conceived and implemented by António Neves, Bruno Baldaia, Carlos Maia, Duarte Belo and Luís Urbano, to show, mainly through drawings, models and photographs, but also using craft instruments and objects constructed by himself, the work of the architect Manuel Botelho, his body of work. An author´s architecture and an unusual universe which are also revealed to us by the photographs of Duarte Belo, in a dialogue between different times that intersect and expand their meanings.

There are 18 designs by Manuel Botelho that are shown here; however, as André Tavares mentions in the review recently published in Ípsilon/Público, "O Interior e o Tempo" [The Interior and Time], "despite being monographic, this exhibition opens up many avenues for thinking about architecture beyond the universe of the author it presents. It shows us a very recent past and highlights the potential of a unique path such as Botelho´s, as well as revealing the contradictory exterior in which his designs sought to inscribe an infinite interior."
 
Come and visit until 21 January, from Monday to Saturday between 14:00 and 18:00, excluding holidays.
 
Note on the picture: photograph by António Neves, 2022
 

When looking at the brief history of the current Higher Agricultural School of Coimbra (ESAC) we learn that the institution that gave rise to it was established in this city, at Quinta de São Martinho ou do Bispo, at Quinta do Paul and at other smaller ones, in 1887, with the name of Central School of Agriculture, and which after two years had its status of National School recognised, a designation which it retained until 1931. On that date, following a thorough reorganisation of teaching, it was renamed the Coimbra School of Agricultural Directors. And so it remained until its extinction, dictated by the creation of the Higher Agricultural Schools, with structured courses at a higher level, leading to a degree. In turn, the former place of residence of the Bishop, the Casa do Bispo, where legend has it that Luís Vaz de Camões stayed, was classified as a Building of Public Interest in 1967 (Decree no. 47508). It would be somewhere around this time that Alfredo Duarte Leal Machado took part in the project for the Main Building of the School of Agricultural Directors, apparently developed at the request of the Ministry of Public Works and Communications (M.O.P.C.) - Directorate of Central Buildings. The documentation on file at the Marques da Silva Foundation - 3 plans - is not dated. We know, however, that Leal Machado completed the Architecture Course at the Porto School of Fine Arts in 1932 and that Coimbra was one of his places of activity, having even reached, during the 1940s, the role of Alderman in the Municipal City Council.

Investigating the career of this architect, who was lost prematurely in 1954, will certainly be a territory of discovery. The challenge remains.

Alfredo Leal Machado was born on 7 December 1904.
 

For those who did not have the opportunity to be present in the Fernando Távora Auditorium on 29 November for the Paolo Zermani conference, here is the link to the video made by TVU.

In what was the 2022 edition of the Marques da Silva Conferences, Paolo Zermani spoke about his references and presented some of his projects: the restoration of the Castle of Novara (2016); the architectural and liturgical rehabilitation of the Basilica of San Andrea in Mantua (2016); the church of San Giovanni in Perugia (2006-10); the crematorium (2010) and the European School, both in Parma (2017); the little chapel in the woods in Varano dei Marchesi (2012).
 
+ info here
 

The room of the Lopes Martins Mansion at the Marques da Silva Foundation, where last Saturday the launch of the book Arguments 1: drifting took place, was too small to accommodate all those who wished to be present. Among them were numerous friends, many of them partners in so many of the moments revisited by Alexandre Alves Costa in this "drift" of his, blended with passion, conviction, friendship and commitment. Affinities immediately shared with Francisco Louçã, who was responsible for introducing it and who, in an intelligent, provocative and humorous discussion, approached all the chapters that form it. He then argued that in this book, which could mean a simple boldness of memory, the drama of lost time is absent, because in it there is evidence of a desire to live life intensely and rationally in the totality of the dimensions that it implies, in it is confirmed, after all, the idea that creating means not giving up the search for "beauty as the splendour of truth". It fell to Alexandre Alves Costa to surprise Francisco Louçã and the audience with the screening of a recording made by António Pina of one of the episodes narrated in the book, in the chapter entitled "Citizenship", then emphasising that, although this is not a book of architecture, it is necessarily dependent on his experience as an architect, which is what shapes his perception of time and space, the way he recognises and imagines the reality that surrounds him, how he participates in it and fits into it. The session was opened by Luís Urbano, vice-president of the Marques da Silva Foundation, who was responsible for introducing Alexandre Alves Costa, in the multiple facets which have characterised his activities and interventions.
 
Argumentos 1: em deriva [Arguments 1: drifting] will now make its own way, awaiting its readers, as the first of two books to be published through a partnership between the Marques da Silva Foundation and the UPorto Press.
 

"We who still live the poems of the New Songbook, recited in small circles by the incomparable voices of Manuela Porto and Maria Barroso, we never freed ourselves from the emotion that we felt. Those of us who are inclusive like me, and do not deny our constitutive past made up of so many parts, we remain grateful to each one of them for being fundamental in building the complexity of what we know and what we are." ("When they were rude and exiled", p. 85 - translated by Gill Stoker)
 
Arguments 1: drifting, the first of two books by Alexandre Alves Costa to be published by the Marques da Silva Foundation and UPorto Press, travels through texts written over the years, in a markedly personal tone. In them, the author reflects on his life experience and gives free rein to a line of thought and action inseparable from his condition as an Architect. He tell us about a “desire to experience beauty, justice and freedom” that he shares here with his readers.
The launch is tomorrow at 16:00, at the Marques da Silva Foundation. The introduction will be by Francisco Louçã.
 
About the picture: Alexandre Alves Costa visiting Peroguarda, photograph by Sergio Fernandez, late 1960s.
 

José Carlos Loureiro´s house, in words borrowed from Sophia, "remains present as a kingdom", his kingdom. He started making it a reality in 1949. Set on a platform over the slope of the land, it was only 100m2, but opened onto the river and was surrounded by a garden ready to be planted. It was with the defence of this project, designed then for parents and four children, that he obtained his Architect´s diploma at the Porto School of Fine Arts. His guiding principles were to finish off his general considerations, the defence of an architecture on a human scale, logical, plastically pure and beautiful in its total simplicity. A simplicity that came from the clarity of the plan and the method of construction. In this house he sought a "sense of shelter" and comfort. He lived there for the rest of his life. He didn´t have 4, but 2 children. Grandchildren came, great-grandchildren arrived. And it grew with them, expanded. This is what the initial project envisaged. It gained space, the walls were allowed to be covered with paintings, it witnessed the passing of the years, collected memories. The trees in the garden also grew and everything in it he planted with his own hands. It took on its mountain origins, the taste for Nature. He allowed it to wrap around the house, mark the way. The river, always there, defining the landscape. And he fought to be happy there.

José Carlos Loureiro was born in Covilhã on 2 December 1925.
 

Paolo Zermani´s architecture has a materiality that aspires to immateriality. It defines itself from the recognition of the Italian landscape and the search for a sense of belonging to a common civilisational heritage, the one on which the foundations of western European culture are based. And that is why it summons the arts, poetry, philosophical thought for a silent reading of each place where it asserts itself, in a gesture that is always aware of what precedes it, as well as the fact that it will in itself become the basis for the transformation that a future time will necessarily bring. The territory of his work thus confronts the transience of life - of people, of architecture, of the city - that constant becoming that defends itself as a condition belonging to the discipline, a vocation to always be reborn, but always in a different way. The compromise between his voice and the collective identity or the coherence and precision that his work reflects are supported by elements such as place, time, earth, light and silence. And it was through them that Paolo Zermani, at FAUP, presented some of his designs to a full and attentive auditorium: the restoration of the Castle of Novara (2016); the architectural and liturgical rehabilitation of the Basilica of San Andrea in Mantua (2016); the church of San Giovanni in Perugia (2006-10); the crematorium (2010) and the European School, both in Parma (2017); the little chapel in the woods in Varano dei Marchesi (2012).
 
A video recording of this event will soon be available via TVU, followed by publication in the Architect Marques da Silva Conferences collection.
 

"Drift is a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society, it is the technique of passing quickly through different ambiences. It is also used, more particularly, to designate the duration of a continuous exercise of that experience" ("Some non-conclusive considerations", p.205 - translated by Gil Stoker)
 
The launch of Arguments 1: drifting takes place on Saturday 3 December at the Marques da Silva Foundation, and introducing the book will be Francisco Louçã, as well as the author. With the presence of two excellent speakers guaranteed, there is no way not to want to come! The session starts at 16:00.
 
+ info here

About the picture: Evocation of May 68, drawing by Alexandre Alves Costa, 2011.
 

Fernão Simões de Carvalho Arquitetura 1960-1999 / The Brutalist Modern is the new exhibition project by the Architecture Circle of Oeiras, developed with the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation in collaboration with the Lisbon Faculty of Architecture, CiAUD and the Historical Archive Overseas. Here you can see the career of this architect and urbanist, born in Luanda in 1929, with work spread across three countries,  Angola, Brazil and Portugal.

Fernão Lopes Simões de Carvalho graduated in Architecture from the Lisbon School of Fine Arts and specialised at the Institute of Urbanism, University of Paris.  As a supporter of the Modern Movement he explored the technical and plastic qualities of the application of raw concrete, clearly learned from familiarity with Le Corbusier and Wogenscky (1956-1959). During the 1960s he returned to Africa. During that period he built a series of emblematic buildings in Luanda and neighbouring cities, including the bold Luanda Broadcasting Centre. in 1967 he came to Portugal, but after 25 April he decided to go to Brazil, due to a lack of commissions and not motivated by reasons of a political nature. In Rio de Janeiro he collaborated as an architect in the office of Horácio Camargo and, in the field of urbanism, with Maurício Roberto. Dating from this period was the plan for the City of Vilas do Atlântico, which he created for the Odebrecht company. Five years later, Simões de Carvalho returned to Portugal and carried out a series of public and private works. At this stage of his life, in parallel with his architecture practice, he carried out the role of teacher, going through the transition from ESBAL to the Faculty of Architecture, Technical University of Lisbon, as well as the role of Urban Planning and Construction Planning advisor for CML. He currently lives in the iconic house he designed in Queijas. His collection was donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation in 2021.
 
The exhibition will be open to the public until 18 February 2023 and can be visited from Tuesday to Saturday between 1400 hrs and 1900 hrs.

+ info: www.oeiras.pt
See Poster here

It is with the return of the Marques da Silva Conferences as opening news today, 29 November, accompanied by the photograph of the Padiglione di Delizia [Pavilion of Delight] in Varano (Parma), a work by Paolo Zermani, that another Newsletter of the Marques da Silva Foundation is published. Read here



Picture: Paolo Zermani, Padiglione di Delizia, Varano (Parma), 1986. Photograph by Luigi Ghirri and Maurizio Negri.
 

After two years of suspension, the Marques da Silva Conferences are back at the Fernando Távora Auditorium (FAUP), and for the first time bring Paolo Zermani to Porto to talk about "Italian Architectures". It is the 15th edition of this cycle, taking place on Tuesday 29 November. The introduction will be by the architect Ana Francisca Silva, author of a masters dissertation on this teacher and architect who, in 2018, was awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for Architecture. The opening will be led by representatives of the two organising institutions, the Director of FAUP, João Pedro Xavier, and the Vice-President of the Marques da Silva Foundation, Luís Urbano.
The session begins at 18:30 with free entrance, subject only to the availability of space.

+ info here

This "appeal of the sun" is an unusual drawing in the archival collection of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira. We only know that it dates from April 1957, when the author was living in Porto and preparing to complete his fourth year of the Architecture Course at the School of Fine Arts. And we also know that this year, far from the naive and restful imagery that the drawing conjures up, coincided with the culmination of a very turbulent period in Hestnes Ferreira´s life. Since he had come to this city in 1952, the Lisbon School of Fine Arts having become unfeasible as it was suffocating politically, Hestnes Ferreira had spent a semester in prison, in 1955, along with other students, including Alcino Soutinho (the long legal process, resulting from the repression exercised on student associations, even though it resulted in an acquittal, dragged on until 1957). Attendance on the Course was interrupted again in 1956, when he was called to carry out his military service. Initially joining the Queluz Militia Officers Course, following information from the PIDE Raúl Hestnes Ferreira ended up being removed and sent to the 1st Disciplinary Company of Penamacor as a private soldier. He returned to Porto, as already mentioned, to complete the academic year. However, faced with this sequence of events, the desire to leave the country became increasingly urgent and, in September, he set off for the Nordic countries. The first destination was Norway, his mother´s home country, followed by Finland, to visit the works of Alvar Aalto. Unforeseen encounters with other architecture students led him to settle in Helsinki. The city then seemed the ideal place to deepen his training and practise architecture. But this choice imposed on him a very different life scenario from that of his country of origin. He was overcome with a desire for the sun and trips to the beach, and missed his friends. The letters addressed to Pitum (Francisco Keil do Amaral) helped to exorcise those ghosts, but he himself would later confess that this shock would also be one of the conditions that would eventually lead to his decision, after one year, to return to Portugal. And even if the United States represented a new experience of life in a foreign land, he would remain faithful to Lisbon, and his studio in the Largo da Graça.

Raúl Hestnes Ferreira was born in Lisbon on 24 November 1931.
 

The Soares dos Reis National Museum, in partnership with the Friends of MNSR – Circle of Dr José de Figueiredo, will open tomorrow, 24 November, the exhibition Life and Secret Aurélia de Souza 1866-1922. This is another activity forming part of the evocative programme which has been taking place, bringing together a group of organisations to mark the first centenary of this artist, in which the Marques da Silva Foundation again collaborates through the loan of an oil painting on canvas by Aurélia de Souza, "Baby and Lilita", belonging to the collection of José Marques da Silva.
Curated by Maria João Lello Ortigão de Oliveira, the exhibition is organised into four major themes which aim to encompass, within the physical limits of a museum space, the visible world of a woman artist as radical as she was secret.

+ info: www.patrimoniocultural.gov.pt

Francisco Granja considered that, despite being "exceptionally endowed with natural charms", the Algarve beaches did not have "facilities worthy of their beauty". The year was 1942, and this then aspiring architect, in a competition held at the Porto School of Fine Arts, advocated the need to equip this territory with resorts that would help to guarantee it a prominent place in European tourism. His contribution was thus to provide the region, rich in natural resources, with a "hotel by the sea" capable of responding to the demands of convenience and comfort that the new times imposed. His architecture, in a desire to adapt to the purpose in view, would follow modern lines, although he tried "not to move too far away from the construction of the regional style". This solution was presented for competition in 207 written items and 12 drawings.

Francisco Granja, the architect who was a student of José Marques da Silva and would come to be known for the Vale Formoso cinema project in Porto, was born on 23 November 1914.

It´s official, the Guimarães Double Fuel Station, designed by Fernando Távora in the late 1950s, is now classified as a Monument of Public Interest.

After a long classification process, begun in 2014 by the Marques da Silva Foundation, Ordinance no. 814/2022 was published today, classifying as a monument of public interest the Covas Double Fuel Station in Salgueiral, parishes of Creixomil and Urgeses, municipality of Guimarães, district of Braga. In this decision, criteria were considered "relating to the matrix character of the property, the ethos of the respective creator, its aesthetic, technical and intrinsic material value, its architectural, urban and landscape design, and the circumstances likely to lead to a decrease or loss of its perpetuity or integrity". And "although the building has been partially altered by later interventions, it is considered that the evocative capacity of the original design is not lost, where the local granite, concrete and iron combine with the natural surroundings to compose a work of great formal and conceptual value, well illustrative of the scope of Fernando Távora´s work and his positioning in relation to the challenges posed by modern architecture."
 
See: Portaria [Ordinance] n.º 814/2022
 

In December 2012, as part of the project Fernando Távora, Permanent Modernity, a facsimile edition was launched of the Diary that Fernando Távora kept of his 1960 trip to the United States and Japan. That edition, coordinated by Álvaro Siza and Rita Marnoto, also included a version in English. Ten years later it is time for that same text to be published and made available to the public in Italian, in a translation by Antonio Esposito, Giovanni Leoni and Raffaella Maddaluno, who are also the authors of the introductory texts. The book, to be published by Lettera Ventidue, with the support of the Fernando Távora Family and the Marques da Silva Foundation, constitutes another important contribution to the dissemination on an international scale of the thoughts and work of this Architect, since, following the version in Castilian (Universitàt Politécnica de València, trans. Aitor Varea Oro, 2014), last year in Italy a translation was published of the book On the organisation of space, by nottetempo, with a translation and introduction by Carlotta Torricelli.
 
The two books in Italian will now be presented on 25 November at the Biblioteca Malatestiana in Cesena, the city currently hosting the exhibition "I Viaggi di Fernando Távora" at the Galleria del Ridotto. The session, organised by the Architecture Course of the University of Bologna, will consist of a conversation between Madalena Pinto da Silva and the translators, and interventions by Fernando Barroso, Elena Mucelli, Fabrizio Apollonio and Carlo Verona.
 
See poster here
 

From Monday to Saturday, between 14:00 and 18:00*, you can visit the exhibition Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design. As was mentioned in the opening session last Saturday, which had contributions from Bruno Baldaia, Duarte Belo, José Salgado and Luís Urbano, followed by a guided tour, this is the most complete of the three held so far, as it shows the unique expressiveness of the original drawings from Manuel Botelho´s studio which are now on display, most of them for the first time. Here, the direction of the route proposed to the visitor, symbolically represented by the plumb line on the landing of the Lopes Martins Mansion stairs, anticipating the arrival in the exhibition space, was designed from a singular territory: a place where affinities intersect, the verticality and coherence of a life, and work whose remarkable quality is now affirmed as indisputably deserving of greater attention and recognition on the map of Portuguese architecture. And this is the main purpose of the curators of this entire programme of activities of which the exhibition Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design is part, to help, via a distanced and mediated glance back in time, to achieve that desired visibility and public interest in an inspiring legacy, a work of theory and design which continues to have much to teach. The exhibition is open until 21 January 2023.
 
+ info here
 
* last entry at 17:30

The exhibition Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design opens to the public tomorrow and will feature the announced surprises, such as the drawings and the project model for a Thalassotherapy Centre to be built in Póvoa de Varzim, developed by Manuel Botelho in collaboration with Manuel Mendes in 1993. Using a formal solution designed under the influence of the mythical imagery of water, he responded to the challenge of creating a large scale public facility with a strong urban impact. Thought of as a place where "land and sea meet, always full of mysteries, where life can happen", due to circumstances unrelated to the architectural project, it ended up not being built. It was, however, for those who came to know it, always recognised as a modelling design exercise, which is why it is one of the works featured in the exhibition. But there is much more to discover in this Manuel Botelho Cartography. The doors open at 15:00 and entrance is free.
 

Manuel Botelho´s studio work is the focus of the exhibition Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design, the third to be held as part of a wider programme of activities beginning in January of this year. With this new exhibition project, the cycle curated by António Neves, Bruno Baldaia, Carlos Maia, Duarte Belo and Luís Urbano, after visiting other institutions, transfers to the institution hosting the collection of this architect, the Marques da Silva Foundation.  Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design starts from the archival documentation and will reveal records, some of them so far unpublished, of the work of a remarkable figure where various dimensions and interests intersect: architecture, object design, theoretical production translated into writing and teaching. Here, between documents and objects, between references to the work built or just designed, between the photographs that Duarte Belo has collected from his visits to the territory and places of this architect´s daily life, will be mapped out a course of reading and an approach to Manuel Botelho´s universe, to his architectural practice, to his thinking, to his unique way of seeing the world.
 
On the 12th, to mark the opening of the exhibition, there will be an introductory session starting at 15:00, attended by Bruno Baldaia, Duarte Belo, José Salgado and Luís Urbano. On this day entrance is free.
 
+ info here
 

For reasons beyond our control, the conference "Paolo Zermani: Italian Architectures" will not take place on the 17th, but rather on Tuesday 29 November, starting at 18:30 in the Fernando Távora Auditorium ( Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto).
 
For the first time, Paolo Zermani will come to Porto to talk about his architectural work. The presentation will be by the architect Ana Francisca Silva, author of a masters dissertation on this architect, defended at FAUP, "The construction of ritual as a constant in design. Study of the work of Paolo Zermani".
 
In the picture: Chapel in the Woods, Varano dei Marchesi, Parma 2012. A place of meditation built within the woods of the Parma region, through which the Strada Romea pilgrimage route passed.
 
+ info: here

In 1968, Rui Goes Ferreira and Manuel Vicente were called to intervene at the junction of the Rua da Carreira and Rua das Pretas in the heart of the historic area of the city of Funchal, then occupied by two recent buildings, uncharacteristic and considered obsolete. In its place, and at the proposal of these two architects, the Commercial Block emerged, still known today by the name of the urban space which it faces, the Largo da Igrejinha. The project, developed at a time when Funchal was getting ready to host an Urbanism Colloquium, with Robert Auzelle and Nuno Teotónio Pereira as special guests, and following the impact of Lúcio Costa´s visit to Portugal, represented a challenge, either because of the internal programme that the building works implied, or because of the nature of its inevitable urban planning programme. The position taken was defended by its authors in the descriptive record: «It is true that the values of the past must be stubbornly defended, but they must be defended with a constructive attitude, either recognising our need for them and accepting their updating, or accompanying them with contemporary works.» Without forgetting the basic point that «in these matters of integration, in urban environments of very distinguished character, everything must take place at the level of a dialogue of quality. That is, any piece of "quality" architecture integrates into an existing “quality” environment. And that “quality” will be the common denominator, the “theme” of the dialogue.»
 

The Largo da Igrejinha Commercial Block is the second of the 22 works highlighted in the Architecture Map recently launched by the Regional Section of the Order of Architects, with the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Regional and Tourism Department of Madeira.  Coordinated by Madalena Vidigal, architect, granddaughter of Rui Goes Ferreira, responsible for the selection of its contents, this Map draws a path that brings a new awareness of the importance of the work for Madeira designed by this architect, while contributing to the "dialogue" that must continue to be maintained between architecture, heritage, and the needs imposed by the contemporary city.

See Map: 02 / Largo da Igrejinha Commercial Block
 

There are trips that have won a place in history, such as the mythical trip that Alcino Soutinho, Álvaro Siza, Alexandre Alves Costa, Fernando Távora, José Grade and Sergio Fernandez organised in 1976, with Greece as the destination. Others had preceded them, but from the group then assembled, Alcino Soutinho and Laura Soutinho, Alexandre Alves Costa and Luísa Brandão, Sergio Fernandez, José Grade, António Corte Real and Manuela Corte Real, now also including José Luis Carvalho Gomes, equipped with three cars (an Austin 1300, a Renault 4L and a Citroën Dyane) decided to explore North Africa. The route would pass through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. There were many mishaps, from broken down cars, a detention at the Algerian border, and the difficult task of trying to find food during Ramadan. But, like all trips, between the friendship that united them and the beauty of the landscape, it was another unforgettable moment for those who experienced it. And from it emerged, beyond memory or for future memory, what they recorded of what they saw, set down in drawings, photographs and texts. Architecture? Yes, a lot. But also everything else, from people to surroundings and animals. Like this "thinking camel" that Alcino Soutinho drew.

Alcino Soutinho was born on 6 November 1930.
 

The Marques da Silva Conferences are back with Paolo Zermani as speaker. What will be the 14th edition of this annual cycle, promoted by the Marques da Silva Foundation in partnership with the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, is scheduled for 29 November, taking place as always in the Fernando Távora Auditorium (FAUP).

The proposed theme is Paolo Zermani: Italian Architectures. In other words, we will get to know, presented in the first person, the work and line of thought of this Full Professor in the Faculty of Architecture of Florence, born in Medesano (Parma), distinguished in 2018 with the Antonio Feltrinelli Architecture Prize.
 
+ info: here
 

Innovation Cycle Stepping Out - Civil Engineering on Display returns to the Campanhã Intermodal Terminal (TIC), this time an on-site session, during which we will listen to the authors of the project and also take part in a guided tour.

It will be this Saturday, 5 November, at 1030 hrs, and will be attended by the following guests: Architect Nuno Brandão Costa (Brandão Costa Architects), Engineer Elza Mendes (Cacao), Engineer Renato Bastos (AdF) and Architect Rita Guedes (Rita Guedes Landscape Architecture).
Moderation will be by the Architect Bárbara Rangel (@dec.fe.up.pt).

Ensure your access to the session (free with prior booking) here: https://portoinnovationhub.pt/inovacao-fora-de-portas/
 
This initiative, with the Marques da Silva Foundation as one of its supporting organisations, is the result of a partnership between the Civil Engineering Department of FEUP, Porto City Council (as part of the Porto Innovation Hub initiative), the University of Porto and Gaia City Council.
 

"Arguments is not a book of architecture, it is an attempt, probably unsuccessful, to use my experience, within its scope, because it is the simplest way of articulating time and space, of modelling reality, of making people dream." (Alexandre Alves Costa)

Argumentos 1: em deriva [Arguments 1: drifting] is the first of a set of two books by Alexandre Alves Costa, published by the Marques da Silva Foundation in partnership with the U.Porto Press. Structured in five chapters – “Memories”, “Citizenship”, “Other Paths”, “Books”, “Architecture, City and Territory” - it brings together a wide range of texts, some hitherto unpublished, which its author, in response to the most diverse circumstances, has written over the years.
 
The launch will be on 3 December, with Francisco Louçã and the author, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, but the book is available from today, from the Foundation store and at the University of Porto Rectory, and will soon be available commercially.
 
+ info about the book here
 

Around 50 works and 20 documents and objects belonging to the painter António Carneiro (1872-1930), some of them unpublished or practically unknown to the public, will be on display at the Quinta de Santiago Museum. It will be a unique opportunity to discover or rediscover this artist who was born 150 years ago in Amarante and lived most of his life in the city of Porto, having found inspiration in the sea and beaches of Leça for several of his acclaimed "landscapes". António Carneiro, the poet with brushes, a retrospective exhibition curated by Cláudia Almeida, brings together an unusual set of paintings, some of them presented side by side in the same exhibition space for the first time. They are works mainly from the collection of the Municipality of Matosinhos, but also from the collections of several national institutions which have joined this initiative, including the Marques da Silva Foundation, which holds a portrait of Marques da Silva by António Carneiro who, like Marques da Silva, was a teacher at the Porto School of Fine Arts in 1928.
 
The exhibition begins tomorrow, 29 October, at 17:00, and can be visited until 26 February next year, from Tuesday to Friday, 10:00 to 13:00 and 15:00 to 18:00, and on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays between 15:00 and 18:00.
 
The opening of the exhibition will be marked by a musical moment given by the Matosinhos String Quartet who will interpret compositions by Cláudio Carneiro, son of the honoured artist.
 
+ info: www.cm-matosinhos.pt
 

Fernão Lopes Simões de Carvalho was born on 27 October 1929 in Luanda, Angola. He completed his Architecture course at the Lisbon High School of Fine Art (1955) and specialised at the Institute of Urbanism, University of Paris (Sorbonne).  He was a supporter of the Modern Movement throughout his career, spread over three countries: Angola, Brazil and Portugal. He explored the technical and plastic qualities of the application of raw concrete, clearly learned during his acquaintance with Le Corbusier and Wogenscky (1956-1959).
During the 1960s, he built in Luanda and neighbouring cities a series of emblematic buildings of a Corbusian character, adapted to the particularities of Angola´s tropical climate, a highlight being the bold design for the Luanda Broadcasting Centre. Even so, many other works from this period remained to be completed.
In April 1974 he began developing the project for the house where he planned to live, but after the Revolution he decided to go to Brazil, where he worked in the Rio de Janeiro office of Horácio Camargo and, in the field of urbanism, with Maurício Roberto. Five years later, Simões de Carvalho returned to Portugal and built a series of works, both public and private. Among them, he dedicated himself to completing his home in Queijas. With a clear Corbusian language, this house represents a synthesis of his brutalist architecture. This is where he still resides.
Today is his birthday. Many Congratulations, Mr Architect.
 

On 27 October will be launched the Manuel Graça Dias dst Prize - Order of Architects, First Work, an initiative of the Order of Architects which carries a double intention: to reveal new values in Portuguese architecture, encouraging and promoting the public recognition of authors of works with reference to Architecture as a benefit of quality in the service of the community; and to celebrate Manuel Graça Dias, emphasising the imagination, nonconformity, availability and generosity that this unique figure always demonstrated in the multiple dimensions which marked his life´s journey (the architect Manuel Graça Dias died in 2019, at the age of 66).

This new Prize, a biannual competition in which the Marques da Silva Foundation is an institutional partner, is therefore aimed at authors of architectural works which have been built in the first eight years after their enrolment  as a member of the OA (in this first edition, between 2014 and 2021), with the author(s) of the chosen work to receive the monetary value of €20,000, an invitation to give a presentation and the opportunity to publish it through the OA.
 
In the same session the title of Honorary Member of the Order of Architects will also be awarded. And if, in the previous year this title was awarded to Maria José Marques da Silva, this year it will be the turn of the institution that her donation to the University of Porto helped to create: the Marques da Silva Foundation. A gesture which thus recognises the work and actions developed nationally and internationally by the Foundation "in research and production of scientific knowledge, conferences, publishing activities and disciplinary reflections on themes that elevate architecture and our disciplinary and scientific heritage."
 
The ceremony on the 27th, starting at 18:00 at the Order of Architects´National Headquarters, is part of the World  Arquitecture Day 2022 programme.
 

Painting and Drawing were a constant in the life of António Cardoso (1932-2021), as the exhibition "This is not just a painting: António Cardoso beyond the evidence" has recently shown. His artistic career dates back to the 1950s, with his attendance at the Alvarez Academy marking the beginning of a workshop apprenticeship that he never stopped practising from that moment. His works reflect the impact of his travels, places in his life, his knowledge of the environment and history of art, as well as the exploration of paths for development that would arouse his interest as an artist in the search for his own language. Works that also asserted themselves in the exhibition circuits, in a surprising itinerary when viewed in retrospect. And now, thanks to his children, Susana and Eduardo Luís Cardoso, eight of the works exhibited at the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier between May and September have become part of the Marques da Silva Foundation. A set which includes works produced between 1968, such as the Object-Painting in polychrome wood, seen here in the illustration, and 2014 with an acrylic on canvas from the Transformations and Transfigurations series, but which also includes collage exercises and pastel on paper, and two original drawings in Indian ink which are part of the album XX Drawings. An important donation that complements António Cardoso´s documentary collection donated in his lifetime, expanding the institution´s artistic collection of Paintings and Drawings with a fundamental name in its history.
 

On 25 October and 8 November, the Architect Egas José Vieira will give two guided tours of the exhibition "Manuel Graça Dias, The Architecturally Incorrect Architect", currently open to the public at the Architecture Circle (Rua Sacadura Cabral, Nº51, Cruz-Quebrada/ Dafundo). The tours begin at 18:00. To take part, just send an email to circulodaarquitetura@oeiras.pt. Registrations are open.
 

Today in Cesena Fernando Távora is the subject, the trip he made to the USA and Japan in 1960 and the Italian influences on his architecture. These are the themes of the conferences by Raffaella Maddaluno and Giorgio Liverani, followed by a guided tour of the exhibition "I viaggi di Fernando Tàvora", which will continue at the Galleria del Ridotto until 11 December.

see poster

THE MATTER OF DATA: Documentary Architecture as Historical Method, the exhibition hosted by the Marques da Silva Foundation as part of the Architectures Film Festival, has entered its final week of opening to the public. Until next Saturday, 22 October, it will still be possible to visit and gain a perspective of the work that the Centre for Documentary of Architecture has been developing, as The Matter of Data is part of the interdisciplinary research that this institution has been carrying out on issues of migration and colonial modernism, relating the multiple meanings and complex history of architectural modernisms, their history of migration and transference.
 
Curated by Ines Weizman, this exhibition is organised under two headings: matter and data. The architectural case studies – presented as “architectural biographies” – bring together documentary film, archival studies, material analysis and digital constructive documentation in tactile and multimedia presentations.
 
Photo credits: Ivo Tavares Studio, courtesy of the Architectures Film Festival, organised by the INSTITUTE
 

In the José Marques da Silva collection can be found many documents on the project that this architect, together with the sculptor Alves de Sousa, presented to the Competition for the Marquês de Pombal Monument in 1913, to be built in the city of Lisbon. There are drawings, an extensive list of written records and photographs which capture different moments in the making of the model, as seen in the illustration. But also a curious correspondence and other related documentation which, combined with the wide press coverage of the time, allows us to trace the lines between the lines of a long and involved history. If the decision to open the Competition itself to national artists had to go through several difficult stages before becoming a reality, even more agitated were the moments which followed the announcement of the winner, with the Jury rejecting the proposal of Marques da Silva and Alves de Sousa, "... Caring for the Living", in favour of "Gloria progressus ... delenda reactio" by the architects Adães Bermudes and António de Couto and the sculptor Francisco dos Santos. Suffice it to say that, in addition to the arguments raised in the newspapers, the matter was discussed in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Council of Ministers, and the Attorney General´s office was urged to comment. The controversy had Marques da Silva and Adães Bermudes as its main protagonists, with even a duel between Marques da Silva and Ressano Garcia being scheduled, following the statements published by the latter (see thesis by António Cardoso, quoting a news report from the Diário de Notícias of 13 May 1914). As for defenders, the Porto duo had António Arroyo (engineer, writer and distinguished musician) as their staunchest advocate. The final decision had to wait until 1917 and from it came the construction of the Monument which today distinguishes the Rotunda of the same name in Lisbon. Meanwhile, Marques da Silva and Alves de Sousa already had in hand the Monument to the Heroes of the Peninsular War, in Boavista, Porto.

José Marques da Silva was born in this city on 18 October 1869.
 

Last Saturday, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the North West Naval Archaeology Group (GANNO) paid tribute to its founder, in 1980, the architect Octávio Lixa Filgueiras. Naturally, it was the extent of the work developed within the scope of the history of naval architecture by Lixa Filgueiras that stood out, particularly through the testimony of two associated elements of this Group, Manuel Martins Rêgo and Maia dos Santos, and the screening of the documentary made in 1991 by Vítor Bilhete, with a script by Octávio Lixa Filgueiras, about the traditional process of building a rabelo boat.
But the session also included, as announced, the launch of the special Bulletin published in June, which brings together texts by several individuals in the fields of architecture, history, and maritime and river culture, an issue whose main driver was the architect António Menéres. And there were several authors present in this session, as well as children and grandchildren of the architect Octávio Lixa Filgueiras. Pedro Borges de Araújo shared some memories of his close acquaintance with Octávio Lixa Filgueiras, from the time he was his student at ESBAP, and did not omit to justify the importance of his legacy.
To mark this moment of homage, the two drawing boards in the lobby of the Lopes Martins Mansion also displayed a series of publications on the naval theme by this architect, as well as the book and the model of the first edition of On the social function of the architect.
 

The José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier is getting ready to rise to a new challenge. We will soon have some news to announce ...
 

The North West Naval Archaeology Group (GANNO), founded by the architect Octávio Lixa Filgueiras, to mark the centenary of its founder´s birth on 16 August, has published a special edition of its Bulletin, to be launched on 15 October at the Marques da Silva Foundation.

The session, which begins at 15:00, will be attended by António Maia dos Santos (board member of GANNO), Miguel Filgueiras (representing the family of the Architect Lixa Filgueiras) and Pedro Borges de Araújo, one of the authors invited to write for this edition of the Bulletin. This will also be another opportunity to watch the documentary "Rabelo Architecture", made by Vítor Bilhete from a study made by Octávio Lixa Filgueiras.

Entrance is free, subject to the availability of space.
 

Between the Rua Silva Porto, Rua de Monsanto, Rua do Ameal and Rua da Telheira in Porto, the construction of a great District Stadium was planned. The programme for the public tender of preliminary designs and projects, in addition to specifying the guiding requirements of the competitors and the composition of the Jury, which would be chaired by the Civil Governor (Colonel Dr Herculano Jorge Ferreira), indicated that the final delivery date of the works at Porto´s Civil Government Secretariat would be 30 May 1934. There would be financial prizes for 1st and 2nd place and honourable mentions for 3rd and 4th. The winning preliminary design would have to present the respective "maquette" by 14 June, receiving for this an additional amount equivalent to the 2nd prize.
 
In an undated album of the Portuguese Society of Fomento, which shows some of the numerous works by the firm Engenheiros Reunidos belonging to the architect José Porto, its author, we came across the photograph of the aforementioned "maquette", not only of the design, but also the fact that this was the winning proposal of the Competition launched by the Civil Government.
 
And all of this allows us to trace the context that explains the presence, in the José Marques da Silva collection (who must have been invited to participate on the Competition Jury), the typewritten document of the "authors of the preliminary design for the District Stadium" with the clarifications and proposed amendments for its final implementation. This document ends with the commitment of the authors, before proceeding to the final realisation of the project, to make a "study visit to the best and most recent stadia, gymnasia and swimming pools in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, not only for the purpose of any correction that might be suggested by direct observation, but mainly to appreciate in loco details of execution unknown to us."
 
But this is a story with much to relate. In the collection of José Porto, who had recently arrived in Porto from Paris, we found about a dozen drawings corresponding to the preliminary design submitted to the competition, but nothing has yet been found about its future development. As for the Stadium, it is only certain that there were echoes of the memory of a desire to build.
 
José Porto was born on 10 October 1883, in Marinhas, Vilar de Mouros.
 

There is a new Architecture Map, the first on Madeira, dedicated to the work of the architect Rui Goes Ferreira. The design and organisation of content was done by the architect Madalena Vidigal, granddaughter of Rui Goes Ferreira, who has been carrying out extensive research on the work of this architect and realising various initiatives to publicise his work in particular, but also on the architecture of the region.

This Map, which was launched on 4 October at the Madeira Photography Museum, was produced and published by the Regional Section of the Order of Architects, with the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Madeira Regional Secretariat for Tourism and Culture. As mentioned during the session, it is an undeniable invitation to stop and reflect on the legacy left by this architect, to go in search of the works represented there and find in them a reading, a narrative that allows us to characterise the contributions of Rui Goes Ferreira.
 
The itinerary presented covers 22 works designed by this architect and, similar to the Architecture Maps launched by OASRN, in addition to the printed version, can also be viewed online. Just click on the identifying number or letter and the respective information appears: www.mapadearquitetura-madeira.com

The winning proposal of the 18th edition of the Fernando Távora Prize will allow Inês Vieira Rodrigues to undertake a "Journey to the go-ahead island architectures" in the Azores and Iceland. It was the unanimous decision of the Jury, chaired by André Tavares (appointed by the OASRN – Order of Architects of the Northern Regional Section) together with Maria João Seixas (appointed by the OASRN as a figure of cultural importance outside the disciplinary field of Architecture), José Bernardo Távora (appointed by the Marques da Silva Foundation), Pedro Baía (appointed by the Casa da Arquitetura) and Francisco de Tavares e Távora Pereira Coutinho (appointed by the family of the Architect Fernando Távora).
Given the quality, relevance and topicality of their themes, the Jury also decided to award two honourable mentions to the proposals by Luis Duarte Ferro, «Loquacious Silences: the culture to come», and by João Carlos de Almeida e Silva, «The presence of Eva. Looking for houses that were advertising gifts».
 
The announcement of the winner took place on 3 October at the OASRN headquarters, when Margarida Quintã and Luís Ribeiro da Silva, winners of the 15th edition of the Prize, gave their conference on the trip "To the Frontiers of México". The presentation conference of Inês Vieira Rodrigues´s trip will take place in April 2024, on the launch date of the 20th edition of the Fernando Távora Prize.
 

Picture: Pico Vermelho Geothermal Power Station on São Miguel Island, © SIARAM.
 

Today, 3 October, on Architecture Day, at the OASRN headquarters, another session of the Fernando Távora Prize will take place, with the announcement of the winner of the 18th edition, the presentation of the work of the winners of the 15th edition, the architects Margarida Quintã and Luís Ribeiro da Silva (pictured here) on "The Frontiers of México", and a short conversation with the journalist Maria João Seixas, jury member of the current edition, for which the Foundation is represented by the architect José Bernardo Távora.
 
The session begins at 18:00 and entrance is free.
 

At the Ridotto Gallery, on an initiative of the Department of Architecture, University of Bologna, with support from the Marques da Silva Foundation, for the first time in Italy will be made known more than 8 dozen travel drawings made by the Architect Fernando Távora between 1960 and 1997. The exhibition I viaggi di Fernando Távora is based on the selection made by the architect José Bernardo in 2017, for the exhibition which took place at the Martins Sarmento Society in Guimarães, but now framed for an exhibition to fit the configuration of the new space, where a set of models are also hosted, made by the architecture students of the Cesena Campus.

The opening, on 23 September, was preceded by a scheduled session as part of the Festa Dell´Archittetura 2022, at the Malatestiana Library, where participants were the director of the Department and the coordinator of the Architecture Course at the University of Bologna, Fabrizio Apollonio and Elena Mucelli respectively, Paula Abrunhosa and Ana Freitas representing the Marques da Silva Foundation, and the curators of the exhibition, Antonio Esposito, Saverio Fera, Giovanni Leoni and Giorgio Liverani.

The exhibition will remain open to the public until 11 December this year.
 

The exhibition "Manuel Graça Dias, o Arquiteto Arquitetonicamente Incorreto"  [Manuel Graça Dias, the Architecturally Incorrect Architect], which opened on 22 September at the Architecture Circle of Oeiras, revisits 18 projects realised by Graça Dias between 1985 and 2018, either individually or in partnership with Egas José Vieira, the former student and architect with whom he would found the Contemporânea workshop in 1990, after their collaboration on the Portugal Pavilion Competition at Expo 92 in Seville. Structured under 4 headings - housing, restoration, recreational and diverse spaces - the exhibition presents a vast set of drawings and models, among which are several originals provided by the Marques da Silva Foundation, as well as photographs and video recordings. This initiative, organised by the Municipality of Oeiras and curated by António Faísca, aims to be a tribute to Manuel Graça Dias, architect and professor of lively and infectious expressions, who taught his students "to be nonconformist" and to "flee from certainties".

Open to visitors until 12 November, from Tuesday to Saturday, between 14:00 and 19:00.
 
Photo credits: Paulo Neto.

For today, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the Architectures Film Festival proposes two more documentaries: “The Modern Writer’s Workshop’: At the Limits of Architectural Freedom” (2014) by Ortrun Bargholz and Lucas Podzuweit, and “Umzugsgut: Articles of Daily Use and Home Furnishings of the Emigrant Are Described as U.” (2017) by Anna Luise Schubert and Amelie Wegner. This third and final session in the cycle presented by CDA will also feature Anna Luise Schubert and Ortrun Bargholz, for an introduction and conversation on the works to be screened. The session begins at 21:30 with free entrance, subject only to the availability of space.

+ info here
 

On 3 October, on Architecture Day, will be announced another winner of the Fernando Távora Prize which is already in its 18th edition. The session, to take place at the OASRN headquarters, also features the presentation of the work by the winners of the 15th edition, the architects Margarida Quintã and Luís Ribeiro da Silva, on "The Frontiers of México", and a short conversation with the journalist Maria João Seixas, jury member of the current edition, at which the Foundation is represented by the architect José Bernardo Távora.

This is an OASRN initiative, in partnership with the Marques da Silva Foundation, the Matosinhos Municipal Council and the Casa da Arquitectura, and sponsored by Ageas Seguros.

+ info at www.oasrn.org
 

Yesterday, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the room was full for the inaugural conference by the curator of the exhibition The Matter of Data, Ines Weizman, followed by the screening of 3 short films. Today will be screened the documentaries "Deep White" and "Phonograph and Memory: tracing a sound from Kabul"". The session begins at 21:30 and is attended by Anne Luise Schubert and Ines Weizman.
 

With the exhibition THE MATTER OF DATA: Documentary Architecture as Historical Method in the background today, at 21:30 at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the venue for the programme of the guest institution for this edition of the Architectures Film Festival, the Centre for Documentary Architecture (CDA), begins the first of three sessions which include, in addition to the inaugural conference of the exhibition´s curator and founder of CDA, Ines Weizman, discussions and screenings of short films and documentaries produced within this Centre which brings together architects, film makers, artists, digital programmers, historians and other lovers of architecture.

In today´s session will be shown A short history of the elevator Pitch (Ines Weizman, 5´); Three hours by car (Anna Luise Schubert, Ines Weizman, 5´) and Bauhaus Beeline (Anna Luise Schubert, Ines Weizman, 2´).
The exhibition remains open until 22 October 2022 and can be visited from Monday to Saturday, from 14:00 to 18:00. During the period of the Festival, until 1 October, entrance is free.

+ info here
 

The 9th edition of the Architectures Film Festival is about to start. The Opening Session takes place today, Tuesday 27 September, at the Passos Manuel Cinema, Porto, at 2130 hrs.

This year´s edition reflects on the idea of “relaxation”, even if this implies demolishing, reducing, reusing, or subtracting the architecture.

The festival takes place between 27 September and 1 October. The full programme can be viewed at https://arquiteturasfilmfestival.com/programa/
 

In 1971, Nuno Portas travelled to Seville, at the invitation of the Department of Aesthetics, Architectural Composition and Art History of the city´s School of Architecture, to give a Seminar on Design Methodology. The interest aroused was evidenced by the great competition registered: more than 50 architects and 150 students enrolled, figures published in the local press. Six classes took place between 27 January and 4 February, in which he not only outlined the "current panorama" of design methodology, but also addressed the activity he had been developing at LNEC. The photograph that accompanies this item was taken from a dossier with press cuttings relating to the Seminar, belonging to the set of documents recently added to the Marques da Silva Foundation Archive.
 
Nuno Portas was born on 23 September 1934.
Congratulations, Mr Architect!
 

As part of the Festa dell´Architettura 2022, the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna, in collaboration with the Marques da Silva Foundation, will present the exhibition I viaggi di Fernando Távora at the Ridotto Gallery.
Taking as a starting point the selection already made in 2017 by José Bernardo Távora, more than 80 original drawings by the architect Fernando Távora, made between 1960 and 1997, will now be exhibited in Cesena, and will for the first time be available for viewing in Italy.
Antonio Esposito, Francesco Saverio Fera, Giovanni Leoni and Giorgio Liverani are curators of this exhibition which opens on 23 September and remains open to the public until 11 December, at the Ridotto Gallery.
 
+ info: https://phd.unibo.it
 

Three years after the premature disappearance of Manuel Graça Dias, the Architecture Circle of the Municipality of Oeiras, with the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation, will open on Wednesday, at 18:00, an exhibition which  "aims to praise and honour" the work of this architect. The exhibition Manuel Graça Dias: The Architecturally Incorrect Architect presents a selection of eighteen designs, highlights of which are the Portugal Pavilion for Expo’ 92 in Seville, and the Blue Theatre in Almada. In addition to sketches and design drawings, the exhibition includes a set of models relating to several of the projects on display.

The exhibition opens on 22 September at 18:00 and can be visited until 12 November from Tuesday to Saturday, between 14:00 and 19:00.
 
+ info: www.oeiras.pt
 

Andrea Soutinho, Celso Santos, Helena de Freitas and João Pinharanda reunited for an animated conversation, moderated by Laura Castro, thus fulfilling the purpose of marking the closing of the exhibition “This is not just a picture: António Cardoso beyond the evidence” through the exercise of meeting and sharing, so cherished and cultivated by António Cardoso. And if this multifaceted and polyhedral figure was transversal to everyone, since everyone crossed paths with him in different circumstances and moments, it was equally essential to call upon other important presences, those of José-Augusto França and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, who have contributed so much to the current recognition of António Cardoso´s artistic originality and internationalisation. The particularity of the Amarante Museum thus became a central theme in this conversation, but there was also the need to continue the path opened by António Cardoso, finding adequate answers to the challenges imposed by a new time, whether in terms of the future of the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Museum - from its architecture to the museological design and the replacement of the Prize -, or in the relevance of a critical repositioning of the teaching of art history.
 

We are publishing today the Marques da Silva Foundation´s newsletter, beginning with the news of tomorrow´s meeting, with Andrea Soutinho, Celso Santos, Helena de Freitas, João Pinharanda and moderated by Laura Castro. But there is much more to read and new initiatives are announced. Read here.
 

In the early 1980s, Fernando Lanhas was asked to remodel and expand the Conímbriga Monographic Museum, including the interior layout, that is, the entrance, reception, exhibition, restaurant and auditorium areas. Thus it fell to him to reconfigure this museum space, with the premise of utilising the part already built, and unifying it (there was the body designed by Amoroso Lopes in 1959, and the three wings designed by António Portugal in 1974). His interest in museology is reflected in the particular attention devoted to the design of exhibition areas and mountings. The Museum reopened its doors in April 1985, with surrounding landscaping by Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles and Francisco Caldeira Cabral. The construction of the auditorium followed. Throughout this process Fernando Lanhas had as his interlocutor, representing the Directorate of National Central Buildings, the engineer José Teles de Oliveira. As a curiosity, it should be noted that, from the correspondence exchanged between the two, what stands out is Teles de Oliverira´s appreciation for the "things" that Fernando Lanhas was writing and for what he considered to be a demonstration of his extraordinary sensitivity in the appreciation of life.

Fernando Lanhas was born in Porto on 16 September 1923. He would be 99 today.
 

This year, under the motto Slow Down!, the Architectures Film Festival will not only move to Porto, but will also visit the Marques da Silva Foundation, where an exhibition, a conference and the screening of short films and documentaries are scheduled. The Festival is structured under four headings: Official Programme; Guest Institution Programme; Experimental Programme; and Competition Programme. Each heading is associated with one or two locations in the city: in addition to the Marques da Silva Foundation, which will host the programme of the Guest Institution, the Centre for Documentary Architecture (CDA), the Festival will include the Cinema Passos Manuel (Official Programme), the Casa Comum (Competition Programme), the INSTITUTO (Experimental Programme) and the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto (Masterclasses and Workshop).

Thus, at the Marques da Silva Foundation (Lopes Martins Mansion), between 28 September and 22 October, you will be able to visit the exhibition THE MATTER OF DATA: Documentary Architecture as Historical Method and discover the archive of the Centre for Documentary Architecture (CDA), an interdisciplinary research collective made up of architectural historians, filmmakers and digital technologists. Among "matter and data", which relate to documentary film, archival studies, analysis of materials and digital constructive documentation, case studies will be on display, presented as "architectural biographies".

To mark the opening of the exhibition, on 28 September at 21:30, there will be a conference by the curator, Ines Weizman. This architect and academic, director and founder of CDA, with a particular interest in issues of migration and colonial modernism, will present the work she has been developing, and on which are based both the present exhibition and the one which toured to Weimar, Tel Aviv and Berlin in 2019, The Matter of Data: Tracing the Materiality of "Bauhaus-Modernism".

Also at the Foundation, on 29 and 30 September, in two sessions starting at 21:30, short films and documentaries will be screened, produced by CDA, with introductions by Ines Weizman, Anna Luise Schubert and Ortrun Bargholz.

During the Festival, which takes place between 27 September and 1 October, access to the Marques da Silva Foundation (exhibition and film screenings) will be free.
 
+ information on the full programme: https://arquiteturasfilmfestival.com
 
 

The professional career of José da Cruz Lima, an architect who graduated from the Porto School of Fine Arts in 1945, took place in an unobtrusive manner, since much of his production was destined to respond to orders from private clients. Even so, at a time when cinematographic establishments were reaching a particular relevance and popularity in urban locations, several projects were carried out by this architect for this type of theatre, either from scratch, or by remodelling pre-existing buildings, generally old theatres which could not resist the growing appeal of the public for film projection. Then in 1946 came the proposal for the remodelling of the Eduardo Brasão Theatre in Santo Tirso. However, in 1949, Sonora Films gave this same architect the responsibility of designing a new Cinema in the centre of the then town, whose construction would continue into the 1960s. The architect would even try, without success, to call the new Cine-Theatre Cine Astro. Still in the 1950s, in 1954, Cruz Lima was asked to remodel the Garrett Theatre in Póvoa do Varzim. And two years later, in Porto, he would develop the "renovation and improvement" projects for the Olympia and Golden Eagle Cinemas, with a view to beautifying and improving the comfort and safety of the respective interior spaces. The Cine-Theatres, designed or redeveloped by Cruz Lima, came to have different destinies, with the architecture of the Porto theatres surviving through a change in function.

José da Cruz Lima was born in Luanda on 9 September 1910.
 

Paraphrasing the words of António Cardoso himself regarding the Marques da Silva exhibition, organised in 1986, the exhibition "This is not just a painting: António Cardoso beyond the evidence" also participates in the moral requirement to show and demonstrate. Opening on 7 May, its objective was to revisit António Cardoso´s life journey, bringing together in the same timeline an indication of the multiple dimensions of the vast work he carried out. It has also achieved the certainty that his legacy must be revisited and made a starting point for renewed reflections on the challenges of the present. Thus, after a first meeting held in June, on 17 September, the closing day, a second meeting will take place with Andrea Soutinho, Celso Santos, Helena de Freitas and João Pinharanda, moderated by Laura Castro. Let us therefore hear about history, art and architecture. The session begins at 1600 hrs, attended by Fátima Vieira, Chair of the Foundation, and all are invited as entrance is free, subject only to the availability of space.
 

Between one image and the other we can see the same female figure at two different times. The first, from the 1930s, as an architecture student at the Porto School of Fine Arts, together with Professor Acácio Lino; the second, with the then President of the Republic, Mário Soares, as President of the Northern Regional Section of the Association of Portuguese Architects, on the occasion of the 4th National Congress, held in Porto in 1986, and as part of which the exhibition "J. Marques da Silva. Architect 1869-1947" would also be opened, in the Casa do Infante. Between one and the other the journey of a life, between one and the other a contrasting presence in an environment then dominated by men, between one and the other the courage to open paths for women architects in Portugal.
 
Maria José Marques da Silva was born in Porto on 7 September 1914, in the Residence-Atelier which today houses the Marques da Silva Foundation, the institution realised by her, together with her husband, the architect and urbanist, David Moreira da Silva.

Photographs: Marques da Silva Foundation Archive, and Documentation Centre of the Northern Regional Section of the Order of Architects, respectively.

As from today, the Marques da Silva Foundation exhibitions are again open to the public. "This is not just a painting: António Cardoso beyond the evidence", "Contrafactum: material, form, content" and "Timeless Aalto: the DNA of Architectural Culture" now enter their final weeks and bring news. In the "Contrafactum" room the 1935 model and its 2022 recreation are already side by side. But make a note of the 17th, to attend the second meeting of "let´s talk about art, history and architecture", this time in the presence of Andrea Soutinho, Celso Santos, Helena de Freitas and João Pinharanda, moderated by Laura Castro.
We are looking forward to seeing you!

Visiting hours: from Monday to Saturday, between 1400 and 1800 hrs (last admission at 1730 hrs).
 

Yesterday, serenely, José Carlos Loureiro said goodbye to life. Born in Covilhã, on 2 December 1925, he arrived in Porto in 1941 to enter the School of Fine Arts. The house he designed in Valbom which, by his living there, was transformed into an intimate place of comfort and family happiness, guaranteed him his architect´s degree and announced what would become a long and intense professional career. José Carlos Loureiro practised Architecture in a committed, generous and passionate way, always showing an exceptional harmony between the art of good design and the art of good construction. He wanted, above all, to imagine and create spaces where people would feel good. He was the author of iconic works such as the Sports Pavilion-Crystal Palace, the Parnaso Building, the Luso-Lima Complex and the Hotel D. Henrique in the city of Porto, also the S. Bartolomeu Pousada in Bragança, the Júlio Resende Residence-Atelier in Gondomar, the Gulbenkian Conservatory and Residential Buildings in Aveiro, the Higher Institute in Maia, and the "Little Chapel" of Fátima. From an early age he combined the challenge of the teaching role with the exercise of design activity, both individually and in collaboration (initially with Pádua Ramos, then with his son, and more recently also with his grandson). He was also, and always, an attentive and interventionist citizen on the issues that dominated his time, having distinguished himself by the ethical matrix that he imprinted on the performance of the many public positions he was called to take on. He participated in important national and international conferences, congresses and exhibitions. For all of these things he received public recognition. In 2013 he donated his professional archive to the Marques da Silva Foundation, which now pays him a heartfelt tribute and expresses deep sorrow on his loss. As his great friend Eugénio de Andrade might have said, his life had the dignity of a poem.

The body will rest in the Resurrection Chapel in Valbom from this afternoon. His funeral takes place tomorrow at 1100.
 

In the lower right corner of this map of the world drawn by Fernando Távora can be seen:  “1 – the trip around the world with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation / 2 – the trip to Brazil with ESBAP students / The ‘places’ where I was (in black); the places where my ancestors were (in green).”

Fernando Távora liked to "jump borders" and, like Pessoa, “travel, run through countries, be constantly other”, having, as an Architect, a permanent regard for the quality of the world´s construction. Drawing was, for him, a form of knowledge and communication, an "eternal and magnificent form of understanding among people." And in the many trips he took, he always found "gestures and reasons" for drawing. From "Cairo or Kyoto, from Philadelphia and Athens, from Bangkok and Congonhas, from Goa and Paris, people, objects and places from antiguity and the present." Those drawings will now continue to "jump borders", both in time and place. After the exhibition held in Guimarães in 2017, coordinated by José Bernardo Távora, Cesena will be the next destination. Tavora in viaggio will open in September.

Fernando Távora would have been 99 today. He was born in Porto on 25 August 1923.
 

The building which Marques da Silva began to imagine in 1919 for the Insurance Company The National was decisive in establishing the image of what continues to be the main place to visit in the city of Porto. Located on the west corner formed by the Praça da Liberdade and the then Avenida das Nações Aliadas was, according to a 1924 report by the same Company, "in general opinion the most beautiful and imposing building" constructed there. In the 21st century, in response to the desire to adapt to other purposes, this building, now in its centenary, is preparing to begin a new cycle of life under a project by the architects Francisco Vieira de Campos and Cristina Guedes (menos é mais [less is more]).  The scaffolding that surrounds it, which the Guild of Independence, symbol of the Company sculpted by Sousa Caldas, insists on challenging, indicates the works in progress, but what this phase of the intervention makes visible will soon be imperceptible to the view of those who pass by, or those who will inhabit the renovated interior spaces. It is for Francisco Ascensão´s camera to record this unique moment, transported into photographs to achieve the best way for us to become privileged witnesses of this interstice of time.

Today, to mark World Photography Day and to stir up curiosity about how much there will be to discover, we are sharing this photograph of what will become the interior of an apartment.
 

At the end of the 1950s, Octávio Lixa Filgueiras was already developing intense activities, either as an architect, as a teacher or as the author of pioneering works in the fields of ethnology and naval archaeology. He had obtained his Degree in 1954 with "Urbanism: a rural theme", an innovative work as it was the first theoretical-practical CODA presented at ESBAP. He had also coordinated the Zone II Team of the Popular Architecture Survey and, in 1956, he was part of the Portuguese representation at the X CIAM Congress in Dubrovnik. Also in this decade he was part of the editorial team for the North, together with Arnaldo Araújo, Manuel Marques de Aguiar and José Forjaz, of the magazine Arquitectura, where, in December 1959, the "Addendum to the C.I.A.M. Grille of Urbanism" was published, a paper which he had presented in Madrid as a fellow of the Institute of High Culture. As a liberal architect since the previous decade he had put his name to a significant number of projects, among which the five stations for The Anglo-Portuguese Telephone Company, located in Porto, Matosinhos and Gaia, were of particular importance. In the image we can see the sketch of the west elevation of SONAE´s manufacturing facilities in Maia, a design that he put forward in March 1960 and which, with its modern lines, for many years came to mark the landscape for those leaving Porto towards the North. Shortly afterwards, in 1962, while this project was still under construction, he was appointed a permanent professor at ESBAP, beginning at that time to put into practice his experience of urban surveys, in the context of the renovation of the subject of Architecture. The multiple roads to travel were thus well defined and, throughout the following decades, still brought together important actions in the field of defending the architectural and cultural heritage, as well as the publication of several short stories, in a return to other genres of writing, announced in 1949 with the book of poetry Requiem to the Glories of the World and other poems.
 
Octávio Lixa Filgueiras was born in Porto exactly 100 years ago.
 

The Marques da Silva Foundation is going on summer holidays. From 13 to 28 August the facilities will be closed. The service for researchers will resume on the 29th of this month. The exhibitions reopen on 5 September. Until then, have a good summer!
 

On the guided visit to the Lapa cemetery last Friday, José Pedro Tenreiro led an attentive group on a tour of the places where several generations of the Marques da Silva and Lopes Martins families rest, while revealing the surprising stories that can be told about them. A journey beginning at the vault designed by Maria José and David Moreira da Silva, where José Marques da Silva lies, and which was concluded, after a passage through the tombs of Bernardo Marques da Silva and António Lopes Martins, in the mortuary chapel designed by Marques da Silva for Amélia Lopes Martins. Here was pointed out the singular way in which it asserts itself in the space and for the time in which it was built, in the relationship it establishes with the tomb of José Lopes Martins, and its importance as a modelling exercise for Marques da Silva´s later projects. A visit which shows that there is much to be said on this subject.

This was the third of the five visits proposed by the Lapa Brotherhood for the 2022 Cycle and had the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 

The visit taking place today in the Lapa cemetery, led by the architect José Pedro Tenreiro, including designs by José Marques da Silva carried out or not, is a unique opportunity to talk about this less visible, and until now less studied aspect of the work of this architect. It begins at 18:00!

+ info: www.irmandadedalapa.pt

The funerary theme was present in José Marques da Silva´s childhood and youth via his father´s workshop, and also in his training in Paris where, in 1895, he presented - at the Salon - the design for a funerary monument to the memory of João Henrique Andresen, documented in the archives of this Foundation. Already an architect, he would be repeatedly invited to develop this genre of design, beginning with the Lapa Cemetery where, incidentally, he is buried. However, it should be noted that throughout his career there were several works developed for the Lapa Brotherhood.

Bearing in mind Marques da Silva´s presence in this space, it is therefore not surprising that the Lapa Order has proposed a guided visit to the Lapa cemetery, to be included in the Cycle scheduled for 2022. The visit will take place on 29 July at 18:00, and will be led by the Architect José Pedro Tenreiro, whose recent investigations into the meaning and circumstances that have given rise to the works built there will allow us to present a new interpretation of this aspect of José Marques da Silva´s architectural work.

Access to the visit involves the purchasing of a €2.50 ticket and prior booking on www.irmandadedalapa.pt (tel. 225 502 828).
 
+ info here

 

Yesterday, 21 July, António Cardoso would have been 90 years old. The date became the ideal pretext for a guided tour of the exhibition This is not just a painting: António Cardoso beyond the evidence, by Susana Cardoso, Domingas Vasconcelos and Paula Abrunhosa. With the house full, among the items and documents on display, and the stories that were told, this was one more exercise in approaching an exceptional life, marked by a work now set down on the timeline.
 

Until 1 August, it will still be possible to compete for the 18th Fernando Távora Prize.

This Prize, promoted annually in memory of the figure who influenced successive generations of professionals in his activities as architect and teacher, is directed towards all those enrolled in the Order of Architects, and leads to the award of a travel bursary.
 
The Marques da Silva Foundation is a partner in this initiative of the Order of Architects´ Northern Regional Section (OASRN), together with the Municipal Council of Matosinhos and the Casa da Arquitectura as partner institutions, sponsored by Ageas Insurance.
 
+ info: www.oasrn.org

From collector to painter, from researcher to teacher, from art critic to the launching of the foundations of what are today the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Amadeo Souza-Cardoso Museum. There is much to discover in the exhibition This is not just a painting: António Cardoso beyond the evidence. On the day that would have been his 90th birthday, 21 July 2022, the Foundation is organising a visit to this exhibition guided by three members of the curatorial team: Susana Cardoso, Domingas Vasconcelos and Paula Abrunhosa. Entrance is free, with a maximum of 25 participants, subject only to prior booking via email to fims@reit.up.pt.

+ info here
 

“Fora de Portas Innovation – Civil Engineering on Display” returns to its original format, with a face-to-face session dedicated to the architectural project of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP).

To address the technical aspects of this important work in the city of Porto, marking the transformation of an entire area of the city (the Pólo II of the University of Porto), the Architect Pedro Ramalho, author of the project, will be present, in conversation with the Architect Bárbara Rangel.
 
To take part, just make an advance booking on the Porto Innovation Hub website.

The initiative “Fora de Portas Innovation – Civil Engineering on Display” is the result of a collaboration between the Department of Civil Engineering of FEUP (DEC/FEUP), Porto City Council, the Rectory of the University of Porto and Gaiurb, with the Marques da Silva Foundation as one of its supporting institutions.
 

With the three exhibitions currently open to the public in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier and the Lopes Martins Mansion, and featuring news of the latest donations, the Marques da Silva Foundation´s latest newsletter came out today. Read here.

From 17 June to 5 August, every Friday at 15:00, the project "Contemporary North" brings to TSF the partner organisations of the Portuguese Network of Contemporary Art (RPAC) - North. On 22 July it will be the turn of the Marques da Silva Foundation, represented by its Chair, Fátima Vieira.

See teaser

In 2013, the Order of Architects granted the title of honorary member to Luís Ferreira Alves, a successful entrepreneur who was discovering photography through passion and chance. Professionalisation in the field of architectural photography emerged as a path during the 1980s, with works for Pedro Ramalho, Álvaro Siza and Fernando Távora. From the work carried out, we know today how important it was to define another way of looking at Portuguese architecture and, in particular, to make known the work of the most relevant architects trained at the Porto school. The Marques da Silva Foundation could not fail to express words of condolence on his passing and, in a gesture of symbolic tribute, to publish two of the photographs in the series "Covilhã Farmstead", taken at the request of José Bernardo Távora in April 2006.
 

On 8, 9 and 10 July the CCB celebrates 10 years of Garagem Sul. And it has been 10 years of challenging and innovative programming, capable of transforming the old CCB car park into a place of reference and reflection when we talk about ways of exhibiting and communicating architecture. The Marques da Silva Foundation, a partner in some of those projects, could not miss being associated with this moment. Congratulations, Garagem Sul!
 
+ info: www.ccb.pt
 

The Activities and Management Report for the year 2021 is available for public consultation.

See Report here
 

In addition to the respective architectural collections to be found at the Marques da Silva Foundation, what is it that unites the Maia Forum, the Marta Ortigão Sampaio House-Museum and the Dom Henrique Hotel, designed by José Carlos Loureiro, the MNSR´s Maria Amélia Velodrome, carried out by Fernando Távora, the Pasteleira Reservoir - City Museum, refurbished by Alexandre Alves Costa and Sergio Fernandez, and the Military Museum of Porto, currently undergoing an intervention by Fernando Lanhas? Yes, they are all part of the Programme for the 2022 Open House, this year curated by the architect Graça Correia and the historian Joel Cleto. Altogether, there are more than 70 works selected in Porto, Matosinhos, Maia and Vila Nova de Gaia. Not to be missed, 2 and 3 July.

+ info: http://2022.openhouseporto.com

In this text from 1984, Nuno Portas expresses his concern for the practical consequences of the application of an alleged “ideology of urban life” which, in his opinion, resulted in disastrous solutions, with the urbanisers (including urban planners and architects) “losing the sense of the size of things and spaces”. 

Listen here: Selected Writings #28

Pictures: Two images presented by Nuno Portas at the Castelldefels symposium (1972), where two models of urban intervention are compared: the operation carried out by the Marquês de Pombal in downtown Lisbon, with the subsequent urban expansion interventions by Ressano Garcia, which Nuno Portas considers to be a successful example of an approach to an urban territory. The images were taken

The timelessness of Aalto´s work and the enchantment of a house in the mountains that translates into an irresistible invitation to discover its intimacy, mediated by the unveiling of gestures that resurrect the expression of materials to find new meanings, filled yesterday afternoon and evening at the Marques da Silva Foundation. In their singularity, they converged as exercises in the art of looking which, overcoming the passage of time, lead us to another dimension, that of the search for understanding the object of that look, showing us, after all, a common heritage, which remains present and transmissible.
 
From today can be visited, within the usual hours (Monday to Saturday between 14:00 and 18:00), the exhibitions Timeless Aalto; Contrafactum (still in process of evolution); and This is not just a painting. And of course there is a new book to read: Vill´Alcina.
 

Today, 28 June, there are several reasons to visit the Marques da Silva Foundation. At 18:00, the joint opening of the exhibitions Timeless Aalto - the DNA of Architectural Culture and CONTRAFACTUM: material, form, content. Later, at 21:30, will be the launch of the book Vill´Alcina, by Germana Lópes Souza. We are expecting you!
 

The fifth meeting of the 2021/2022 Autofocus project programme has as its theme "Experience | Perception" and is scheduled for today, 27 June. The session, in the form of a webinar, begins at 16:00 and will include talks from:

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, New questions around the primacy of perception in architecture
Juhani Pallasmas, From Vision to Existential Sense: architecture and our experience of the world
Steven Holl, Revisiting Questions of Perception

A period of open discussion will follow with an enlarged panel of participants.
Tomorrow, in the context of this Seminar, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the exhibition "Timeless Aalto - the DNA of Architectural Culture" will open.
To discover how to take part and find more information about this seminar, just see the press-release.

The ABLeS programme, in which Architecture, Philosophy and Sciences intersect, results from a partnership between three Research centres: Institute of Philosophy/Mind Language Action Research Group (FLUP); Study Centre for Architecture and Urbanism (FAUP); and Research Centre for Land, Architecture and Design/G1 (Faculties of Arts and Architecture of the Lusíada University of Porto - North). These sessions are coordinated by the Professors and Architects Pedro Borges de Araújo and Sérgio Amorim.

The sessions will be recorded and made available at a later date on the ABLeS Intersections digital platform.
 

The project "CONTRAFACTUM: material, form, content" is developed from a quest to understand the production context of a plaster model belonging to the Marques da Silva Foundation´s collection - "Aquila", Urbanisation Plan for Termas do Gerês, 1935 (José Porto, Engenheiros Reunidos).

Between the restoration of the original model and its copy, using the recreation of materials and construction processes, the interviews and stagings around its making, "Contrafactum" establishes a dynamic game between the piece and its location which will transform a room in the Lopes Martins Mansion into a stage for presenting mediations.

Assuming the experimental character of "CONTRAFACTUM: material, form, content", with the exhibition space still only partially assembled, Graciela Machado, who is responsible for the design and coordination of the project, will give a presentation on 28 June on what has been done and what is still being worked out. The opening of the room, in a gesture of anticipation, will allow the public to follow the project´s evolution.
 
"CONTRAFACTUM: material, form, content", produced in partnership with the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, is the Marques da Silva Foundation´s response to the challenge launched by the Portuguese Foundation Centre, Project 17-Geographies, Cultural Heritage of Portuguese Foundations.
 
+ info here
 

This was the sign that identified João Queiroz´s studio, in the Rua de Santa Catarina. This soldier who was also an architect belonged to a generation of architects trained by the Porto School who remained linked to the city as the focus of their professional practice, having played a discreet but decisive role in the urban transformations of Porto and northern Portugal during the 20th century.

João Marcelino Queiroz was born in Porto on 23 June 1892.
 

From a visit to a place, a book can be born. That´s what happened with Vill´Alcina, more than a book, an artistic object developed by Germana Lópes Souza within the scope of the subject General Theory and Organisation of Space, as an architecture student at FAUP, after a visit to this house that blends into its surrounding landscape in Caminha, guided by the architect who designed it in 1974, Sergio Fernandez.

With the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation, the book is there, ready to be shared. The launch session, on 28 June at 21:30, will be attended by the architect Sergio Fernandez and the author, as well as the guest architect Maria Manuel Oliveira.
 

The Marques da Silva Foundation confirms that tomorrow, 23 June, on the eve of São João, the exhibition "This is not just a painting: António Cardoso beyond the evidence" will be additionally closed to the public. It reopens on Saturday 25 June at 14:00, resuming the scheduled timetable.
 

In parallel with the Seminar scheduled for 27 June, ABLeS (Autofocus Blended Learning eSeminars series) the exhibition "Timeless Aalto - the DNA of Architectural Culture" comes to the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 
Curated by Tore Tallqvist (collaborator with Alvar Aalto and professor of the History of Architecture at the University of Tampere), the exhibition, based on works developed with students, aims to trace the "genealogy" of Alvar Aalto, taking note of his work throughout the history of architecture. Professor Olli-Paavo Koponen and the architect Marianna Verhe also collaborated on this exhibition project. The graphic line was created in collaboration with the architect Jussi Heinonen.
 
During its visit to Portugal, and more specifically to the Marques da Silva Foundation, the exhibition will include a new module with documentation on projects by Portuguese architects influenced by the work of Alvar Aalto, namely Fernando Távora, Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, Alcino Soutinho and Alfredo Matos Ferreira.
 
The exhibition opens on 28 June, on the first floor of the Lopes Martins Mansion (Marques da Silva Foundation), where it will remain open to the public until 17 September of this year.
 
+ info here
 

If you haven´t yet had the opportunity to visit the exhibition "Beira Central Station. Keeping it Modern", you can do so today or tomorrow, the day it closes. Located in the main wing of the Lopes Martins Mansion (Marques da Silva Foundation), the exhibition tells the story of this project of the 1960s, designed by the architects João Afonso Garizo do Carmo, Francisco de Castro and Paulo de Melo Sampaio, placing it on the map of modern architecture that can still be traced today in the Mozambique region. The exhibition comes from a research project coordinated by Paulo Lourenço and Elisiário Miranda, supported by the Getty Foundation. It can be visited between 14:00 and 18:00.
 

In this 19th episode of "Word-of-Mouth: let´s talk about architecture", José Adrião takes us along the paths imagined and constructed by Dimitris Pikionis, in the 1950s, for the Acropolis in Athens.

Listen here

Picture: Photographed by José Adrião, Acropolis Path or Mount Philopappos, 2021.
 

What is the meaning of the sculptures which punctuate the facades of the São João National Theatre and how do they relate to the architecture of the building? What techniques were used for its construction and, now, for its restoration? What principles guided the restoration of this Theatre´s facades and how were the different skills involved articulated? What strategies can be proposed for its preservation?
 
The answer to these and other questions is given to us by the Architect Ângela Melo (DRCN) and the Engineer Esmeralda Paupério (IC-FEUP) in this documentary film, made by Luís Martinho Urbano for the initiative "Fora de Portas Innovation”, a project promoted by the Municipality of Porto and coordinated by the Department of Civil Engineering of FEUP, in partnership with the Rectory of the University of Porto, Gaiurb, the Order of Engineers Northern Region, the Order of Architects Northern Regional Section, the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Casa da Arquitectura.
 
See  here

The chair destined for Raquel Henriques da Silva was empty due to the CP strike, but Laura Castro and Rui Ramos took care of this first meeting programmed in the context of the exhibition "This is not just a painting: António Cardoso beyond the evidence". After the welcome from the Foundation´s Chair, Fátima Vieira, the reading of the letter written by António Cardoso to José Augusto França in the "New Year" of 1985 served as a theme for a conversation about the references which shaped the speech of this historian, from his French origins to the importance of a view "contaminated" by the sociology of art, as emphasised by Laura Castro. The importance of the research carried out by António Cardoso on Marques da Silva and his significance for the history of Portuguese architecture was highlighted by Rui Ramos, for whom the publication of his thesis can be considered as a kind of encyclopedia book. In an analysis which began from the margins, from the clues that the author leaves sown in counterpoint to the central text, he explained how more formal discourses were deconstructed here and the questions to be asked about classical heritage in the 20th century were reformulated. An understanding of the complexity inherent in the architectural work, which is today, in its methodology, more consensual in its attention, for example, to design, but which at the time proposed another way of thinking, studying and communicating. The conversation extended to the audience, providing interesting discussions on the interpretative models of history and the uniqueness of the Portuguese case, about the many forms that design can take, or even about how the history of Portuguese architecture has been viewed, and the meanings that, depending on the background of the writer, it can assume.
 
The next meeting takes place on 17 September and will reunite Andrea Soutinho, Helena de Freitas, João Pinharanda and Laura Castro.
 

History by training, art by vocation, and architecture as a field of investigation, were areas that were always present and confluent in António Cardoso. What they represented for the work that he developed on multiple fronts, and the many themes that the intersection of these three domains provide, is the starting point for this first conversation.

Entrance free, limited only by space available. Come and take part!
 

The 27th episode of Selected Writings retrieves a text by Manuel Botelho, from 2005. It is a reflection on poetics in architecture and was chosen for this podcast with the help of António Neves.

The picture that accompanies it is a photograph by Duarte Belo of the house which the architect Manuel Botelho began to design in 1999 for Dr Paulo Pires, at Quinta Vale de Locaia, Cambres, Lamego. A house where you feel that "poetry is thus assumed not as a method, but as a natural atmosphere of the architectural project".

Listen here
 

Luiz Alçada Baptista entered the Competition to obtain his Architect´s Degree in December 1955, with the design for "a dwelling in Serra da Estrela". He set out to develop his work on the "study of various elements of an autochthonous nature [...] of the conditions of an area of Beira Baixa" and intended, with his proposal, to make a "contribution to an architecture that is more integrated in the environment and more in line with the sensibility and resources of men [...] an architecture which serves man and is his reflection".

In the following decade, the modernist principles and the imperative of integration in the surrounding region defended by Luiz Alçada Baptista would come to be applied to the Houses of the Mountain, built as a second home for himself and his brother, the writer António Alçada Baptista, on the site of Dr António´s Tapada at Covilhã. The Houses are still associated with the Alçada Baptista family and are in the process of being classified.

Luiz Alçada Baptista was born on 9 June 1924.
 

Opening next Thursday at 1830 hrs, at the Quinta de Santiago Museum, the exhibition “From what I see. Aurélia de Souza”. The initiative is part of the evocation of the first centenary of the artist´s death, being part of a wider programme that brings together seven partner organisations, to culminate in 2023 with the launch of a Catalogue Raisonné.

Jointly curated by Cláudia Almeida – coordinator of the museum - and Filipa Lowndes Vicente – researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, the exhibition is based on the municipality´s collection, a series of 21 works by the artist that cover the various themes developed in the course of her artistic activity, complementing this aesthetic and visual universe with other works from private and public collections, including a painting from the José Marques da Silva collection, supplied by this Foundation, "Baby and Lilita".

An exhibition to show us "what Aurélia saw" and which now challenges us to say of these works "what we see".
The exhibition can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday and holidays from 1000 to 1300 and from 1500 to 1800.
 

On 13 June, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, we will be talking about history, art and architecture. It is the first conversation to take place in the context of the exhibition "This is not just a picture: António Cardoso beyond the evidence", with Laura Castro, Raquel Henriques da Silva and Rui Ramos. These first three guests crossed paths, in the most varied circumstances, with António Cardoso, but if this is the starting point for the conversation, everything is left open as to the point of destination. Nothing like coming and taking part. Entrance is free, subject only to the availability of space. It begins at 18:00.
 

Today, 3 June, one year after the death of António Cardoso, the Marques da Silva Foundation launches its Newsletter highlighting the exhibition "This is not just a painting: António Cardoso beyond the evidence", and news of a first conversation about history, art and architecture which, on 13 June at 18:00, will bring together Raquel Henriques da Silva, Rui Ramos and Laura Castro. A gesture of homage and recognition, as memory is "the human resource against death, erasure". But there is much more to read here.
 

"Overlooking the small hill that marks the historic centre of Aveiro, the municipal building designed by the architect Fernando Távora is a built demonstration of his «lesson of constants». In 1963, Távora took on the implementation of the presuppositions of the urbanisation plan developed by Robert Auzelle. By reformulating the urban image through new indications of monumentality, the transition from plan to project highlighted the confrontation between the historic fabric and a modern centre of commerce and services on the south bank of the Côjo Canal. The ninety metre high tower, which was not built, was an affirmation of vertical modernity in the horizontal landscape of the region. For the building that housed the library Távora reserved a symbolic role, opening transparencies to the north-east wind that flows over the waters of the Vouga saltworks, incorporating its form into the long life of the town of Aveiro."

This is the summary of Domingos Tavares´s new book about the municipal building which Fernando Távora conceived and constructed in the centre of the city of Aveiro between 1963 and 1967, and which Dafne Editora will launch on 5 June, in the authors´ space at the Aveiro Book Fair.
 
In this book, containing reproductions of some of the documents belonging to the archives of Fernando Távora and David Moreira da Silva, provided by the Marques da Silva Foundation, and photographs by Luís Oliveira Santos, the author presents the design of the building - recently renovated by José Bernardo Távora - in the urban history of Aveiro and, in showing the convictions and ideas underlying the thinking of Fernando Távora (1923-2005), he makes use of his «lesson of constants» to record the architect´s work in the permanent transformation of the city and its history. A narrative framed by Robert Auzelle´s urban plan that unfolds in the civic sense of the building, in the appreciation of the craftsman and the qualities of the construction, of memory as an instrument for the design of urban space.

+ info: www.dafne.pt
 

Last Saturday the Fora de Portas – Civil Engineering on Show session took place, dedicated to the presentation of the renovation process of the facades of the São João National Theatre. It was also the moment to launch another Workbook. And in this twenty-seventh edition, Ângela Melo and Esmeralda Paupério tell "how this facade was made and how the smiles and tears of each sculpture were retained. A lesson in history, construction and respect for the knowledge of different eras".

For those who did not have the opportunity to attend the session in person, where, in addition to the contributions of Bárbara Rangel, Ângela Melo and Esmeralda Paupério, the documentary video made by Luís Urbano on the intervention was shown, it is now possible to access the page “Inovação Fora de Portas – Engenharia Civil à Mostra” [Fora de Portas Innovation – Civil Engineering on Show], which gives the link to Porto Innovation Hub´s YouTube channel.

SBO #27 can be obtained at the Marques da Silva Foundation shop.

It is enough to cite, as an example, among the vast body of work designed and built by Filipe Oliveira Dias, the residential complex of Monte de São João in Porto (INH Prize 2014, jointly with Rui Almeida); the municipal theatres of Vila Real and Bragança and the Helena Sá e Costa Theatre (Porto) and the "Flame" chair, inspired by a harp and designed to be used for that purpose, which became the chair chosen for the White House Press Room in Washington DC; the requalification of the pavement in the Rua Miguel Bombarda (in partnership with the painter Ângelo de Sousa); the Felgueiras School of Technology and Management; and the Mirandela Municipal Swimming Pools, to immediately understand the wide scope of activity of this architect who prematurely departed on the eve of his 51st birthday, 15 October 2014.
 
Filipe Oliveira Dias graduated in Architecture from the Porto School of Art in 1989, and later obtained his PhD at the University of Seville. His professional activity began, even before completing his degree, in the studio of the architect Pulido Valente, but he soon established a studio in his own name. The designs relating to theatrical equipment, including furniture design and, in addition to the works mentioned, the restoration and modernisation of the São João da Madeira cinema, attracted public notice, though social housing, large public facilities and interventions of an urban nature were also fields in which he developed extensive activity, with several awards and publications, in Portugal and abroad.
 
Today, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the donation of this architect´s collection was made official by Dr Cláudia Oliveira Dias and Professor Luís Urbano (Vice-Chair of the Foundation). Also present were Dr Mafalda Maçorano and Professor André Santos. This means that the documentation relating to the design activities of Filipe Oliveira Dias, from graphic documentation to a set of models, including pieces he designed, as well as a significant professional Library, will soon become part of the Foundation´s Archive, thus becoming available for consultation and study.
 

“Innovation Fora de Portas – Civil Engineering on Show” returns with a session dedicated to the rehabilitation process of the facades of the São João National Theatre.

With the return to normality, Fora de Portas also reinvents itself and takes on a hybrid format. Thus, the session at the São João National Theatre next Saturday will be able to receive 20 participants who will have the opportunity to attend the conference attended by the Engineer Esmeralda Paupério from the Construction Institute of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP), and the Architect Ângela Melo from the Regional Directorate of Northern Culture, who will share their perspectives on the process of recovering the exterior of the iconic theatre, in a conversation moderated by the Architect Bárbara Rangel, also from FEUP.

Participants will also be able to follow a guided tour, led by the guests, of the building´s facade, as well as watch the usual documentary video.

In parallel, and for those unable to attend in person, the live broadcast will continue on the webpage of Fora de Portas – Civil Engineering on Show, or on Porto Innovation Hub´s YouTube channel.

Both formats (in person and online) remain open and free of charge, requiring only prior registration.

“Innovation Fora de Portas – Civil Engineering on Show” results from the collaboration between the Municipality of Porto, as part of the initiative Porto Innovation Hub (PIH), and the Department of Civil Engineering of FEUP (DEC/FEUP), in partnership with the Rectory of the University of Porto and Gaiurb, with support from the Order of Engineers - North Region (OERN), the Order of Architects (OA), the Casa da Arquitectura (CA) and the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 

In this "Word-of-Mouth: let´s talk about architecture", Ricardo Carvalho takes us back to the neighbourhood of Tacubaya, in Mexico City, once more to immerse ourselves in the intimate atmosphere of a space as unrepeatable as it is fragile, as delicate and subtle as it is monumental and affirmative: Luis Barragán´s House.
Listen here
 

Listen here
 

Image: Luis Barragán photographed inside his house, 1980. "Town & Country".
 

The Autofocus Blended Learning eSeminars (ABLeS) are back. On 24 May the theme of Space. DIY [Do it yourself] will be addressed, on 26 May, Memory Matter Matters. As usual, each seminar will have a guest speaker: on 24 May it´s the neuroscientist Kate Jeffery, of University College of London, with "Uneasy Cities"; on the 26th, the architect-philosopher Gareth Griffiths, from Tampere University, with "What does local mean?".
The sessions begin at 15:00, the conferences at 16:00, followed by a space for discussion. They are free to access, just click on the respective links:

https://ifilosofia.up.pt/activities/session-3-uneasy-cities-with-kate-jeffery
https://ifilosofia.up.pt/activities/session-4-what-does-local-mean-with-gareth-griffiths
 
The ABLeS programme, where Architecture, Philosophy and Science intersect, results from a partnership between three research centres: Institute of Philosophy/Mind Language Action Research Group (FLUP); Centre for Architecture and Urbanism Studies (FAUP); and Research Centre in Territory, Architecture and Design/G1 (Faculties of Arts and Architecture of Lusíada University - North (Porto). These events are coordinated by Professors and Architects Pedro Borges de Araújo and Sérgio Amorim.

The sessions will be recorded and made available at a later date on the ABLeS Intersections digital platform.
 

The extensive and intensive document cleaning campaign begun in January of this year by the Marques da Silva Foundation with the support of the UP´s Graphic Document Restoration Workshop (GDI - UP Digital) recorded some very impressive numbers in May:

- 4779 records (written items and drawings) belonging to the collection of the architect António Teixeira Guerra, dated between 1946 and 2004, relating to his training period and more than 100 projects, in addition to 13 boxes of diverse documentation and photographic records;
- 8935 records of the disciplinary practice of the architects Maurício Vasconcellos and Luíz Alçada Baptista (individual and joint collections: GPA/Planning and Architecture Group), dated between 1954 and 1996, relating to around 300 projects;
- 23 boxes of varied documentation, produced and assembled in the most diverse contexts by the architect Nuno Portas, from bibliographical records, personal documents (curricula, correspondence, ...), texts, pedagogical content, legislation, clippings, travel records, etc.;
- 1109 documents from the professional collection of Manuel Graça Dias and Egas José Vieira, dated between 1982 and 2002, relating to around seven dozen projects, plus 18 boxes of assorted documentation.

This means that a further 21,923 documents have been entered and can now be consulted (mostly drawings, many of them unpublished) and 54 boxes with written documentation and photographic records. This activity will now continue internally, with a new document digitisation campaign being prepared which will not only expand consultation possibilities but also strengthen access to documents via the Marques da Silva Foundation´s Digital Archive.
 

Manuel Graça Dias liked to talk about life in and around cities, about "life that can still be generous, complex, unforeseen, chaotic, multiple". In this text of 2005, he discusses the way in which the terms “street” and “road” have come to be used, appropriated, added, relocated, ...

Listen  here

In 1960 Álvaro Siza began to design the Tidal Pool in Leça da Palmeira. Classified as a National Monument in 2011 and included in the “Catalogue of Architectural Works of Álvaro Siza” recorded in the World Heritage Indicative List (2017), it is a work that stands out for its exceptional cultural and scenic values, and for being an international reference of modern architecture still in full use by local communities. Between 2018 and 2021 it was the subject of a series of requalification and restoration works by Álvaro Siza himself, carried out by Matosinhos Municipal Council. A study of the management and conservation of the complex was also carried out, coordinated by Teresa Cunha Ferreira (CEAU-FAUP), financed by the Getty Foundation, as part of the Keeping It Modern programme.
 
The exhibition “NO SITE IS A DESERT. Álvaro Siza: Tidal Pool (1960-2021)”, which opens today at FAUP at 18:00, curated by Teresa Cunha Ferreira and Luís Urbano, is now proposing a renewed look at this work of reference in the context of world architecture, illustrating its multiple lives through a set of drawings, photographs, audio-visual items, models, a few books and periodicals made available by the Marques da Silva Foundation, and objects – many of them unpublished – which allow us to reconstitute a critical narrative of the process of the design, construction and renovation of the building over the last six decades. A catalogue will also be launched which offers time travel through the work, to accompany the exhibition. This initiative seeks to open new interpretative perspectives and, at the same time, to inspire the teaching and the practice of architecture for future generations.
 
Entrance to the exhibition is free and can be visited from Monday to Friday, between 9:00 and 20:00.
 
+ info: www.arq.up.pt
 

On International Museums Day, which is celebrated annually on 18 May, come on a free visit to the Marques da Silva Foundation´s exhibitions.
Enter the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, for "This is not just a picture: António Cardoso beyond the evidence" and be surprised by what can be seen of the many lives of António Cardoso, from collector to painter, from researcher to professor, from traveller to author and art critic. And in the corner that closes the exhibition, take the electric tram and travel along line 22 in his company to see the architecture of Marques da Silva that can be seen from there.
There are other possible journeys if you enter the Lopes Martins Mansion, in this case with Mozambique as your destiny. Here you can access the mapping of this territory´s modern architecture, get to know the design for "Beira Central Station" and also admire José Porto´s drawings for the Grand Hotel of this same city.
We are waiting for you!
 

A guided tour by Carlos Maia and Duarte Belo, starting at 17:00; the presentation of the book Manuel Botelho Territory, by Duarte Belo and Bruno Baldaia, at 17:30; and, at 18:00, the round table "Culture and Context", with Filipa Guerreio, Luís Tavares Pereira, Mariana Carvalho and Paolo Melis, moderated by João Cabeleira, five architects who in various circumstances have crossed paths with Manuel Botelho, are the initiatives proposed to mark the closing of the exhibition "Manuel Botelho Territory", which opened on 6 April in the Garagem Avenida Gallery in Guimarães. On this occasion, the agreement will also be formalised for the transfer of around 1500 books from the library of Manuel Botelho to the School of Architecture, Art and Design (EAAD) of the University of Minho, represented by its Director, Paulo Cruz.
 
This exhibition, curated by António Neves, Bruno Baldaia, Carlos Maia and Duarte Belo, focuses on the three decades of work in Manuel Botelho´s architectural studio, covering architecture, object design, theoretical reflection, writing and teaching, and results in a partnership between the Laboratory of Landscape, Heritage and Territory (Lab2PT), the EAAD, the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP). This achievement is part of a cycle of different exhibitions on the life and work of Manuel Botelho begun in January at FAUP, and which, before returning to Porto, will also go to Coimbra.
 
The delivery of Manuel Botelho´s library to the EAAD is the result of the cataloguing of his work carried out by the curators of the exhibition and by the fellows of the University of Minho, while his professional archive, documentation relating to 67 projects from housing to public facilities, has already been donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 
All of these initiatives also have the support of the Foundation for Science and Technology and the Order of Architects – Northern Regional Section.
 
+ info here

Beira Central Station, currently managed by the Railway Company of Mozambique, was built between 1962 and 1963, from the collaborative work of a team of architects (João Afonso Garizo do Carmo, Francisco de Castro and Paulo de Melo Sampaio) led by Bernardino Ramalhete. Even so, its design exhibits a strong unitary character, in which the impressive arch stands out, with a 55m span that welcomes those who approach it. This project arose at a time when Portugal, as a pluricontinental territory, sought to affirm an image of modernism, progress and a desire for permanence through a considerable investment in large scale infrastructure construction. Beira Central Station is part of this historical cycle and is an example of that architecture, guided by criteria of quality and speed in the construction process. Surviving the wear and tear imposed by the multiple adverse situations it has had to face, it continues to be an identifying symbol of Beira´s urban heritage and of architecture of Portuguese origin which can only be found in Africa.
 
It is the importance of this railway station, in terms of architecture and heritage, which is at the basis of the research project coordinated by Paulo Lourenço and Elisiário Miranda. With this, it is hoped to be able to lay the foundations for a programme of intervention and preventive action, such as obtaining its future classification. The project, financed by the Getty Foundation, also involves the holding of knowledge-sharing seminars and initiatives, with the current exhibition being one of the steps to be taken. After being presented in Guimarães and before arriving in Beira, it can be visited at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the space where the work of other architects is documented who also designed for Lusophone Africa, meaning that some records of another Beira project can also be made known, the Grand Hotel designed by José Porto in 1949, the same author, with Ribeiro Alegre, of the urbanisation plan that currently continues to manage Beira´s urban topography.
 
The exhibition, which opened last Saturday, 14 May, can be visited from Monday to Friday, between 14:00 and 18:00, in the Marques da Silva Foundation´s Lopes Martins Mansion until 18 June.
 

Tomorrow at 16:00 the Lopes Martins Mansion at the Marques da Silva Foundation will host a new exhibition: "Beira Central Station. Keeping it Modern". This is a project developed as part of the Keeping It Modern programme, an initiative of the Getty Foundation of Los Angeles, which in 2019 awarded a grant to the conservation and maintenance project of Beira Central Station (1957-1966) in Mozambique.
 
To mark this inaugural moment, the project coordinators, Paulo Lourenço and Elisário Miranda, respectively from the School of Engineering and the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the University of Minho, will present the project, in a conversation moderated by Luís Martinho Urbano.
 
In its visit to Porto, since it is a touring exhibition, there will also be an extension to the project to show some drawings and photographs of the period relating to the iconic Beira Grand Hotel, from the collection of the architect who designed it in 1949, José Porto.

On this day, entrance is free.
+ info here
 

It is on the banks of the Tagus that Ricardo Bak Gordon finds the subject for this Word-of-Mouth: let´s talk about architecture, a work that, although not an architect´s project, constitutes an object of value and architectural meaning: the Bridge over the Tagus or the 25th of April Bridge.

Listen here
 
Picture: Opening day of the Bridge over the Tagus, 6 August 1966 (in DN/Lisbon of Old)
 

While the diversified programme of initiatives designed around the work of Manuel Botelho was taking place, on 7 May the donation contract was signed for the professional collection of this Architect to the Marques da Silva Foundation. A session that was also attended, in addition to the Donor, and the Chair, Fátima Vieira, and Vice-Chair of the Foundation, Luís Martinho Urbano, by the architects António Neves and Bruno Baldaia. It was a symbolic moment, but one which already formalises the integration of documents relating to 67 architectural designs and to his training period in Italy at the institution´s Documentation Centre, in anticipation of the activities that will soon take place at the Marques da Silva Foundation itself. At this moment and following those that have already been held at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto between January and March of this year, the exhibition "Manuel Botelho Territory" is open to the public at the Galeria Garagem da Avenida in Guimarães, which will close on 18 May.
 
+ info here
 

"This is not just a picture: António Cardoso beyond the evidence" there it is, to make known António Cardoso, who he was, the many things he did, how much he left us. An exhibition that begins with a gesture of recognition, but which surprises by the many things it found to tell. António Cardoso dedicated a large part of his life to taking care of memory, to researching the history and meaning of the work of José Marques da Silva and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, and everything and everyone who made it possible to understand them, but he also lived his time in an unusually committed way, as an artist, as a man of action, in a continuous movement of consecration of the art of sharing and dialogue.
 
With this exhibition, invaded by colour, the Residence-Atelier is once again a meeting place. There are five spaces to go through: the room of "altars", of "oils", of "intersecting geometries", of "other paths" and the "nooks". On the day its doors opened many came to visit. Come too, we are waiting for you.
 
The exhibition can be visited until 17 September.
 
+ info here
 

The Beira Central Station exhibition. Keeping It Modern will open its doors to the public on 14 May at 16:00. In its transition to the Marques da Silva Foundation, after appearing at the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the University of Minho, it will include a set of original drawings by José Porto, an architect with several works designed for the city of Beira in Mozambique in the mid-20th century, one highlight being the Beira Grand Hotel.
 
To mark the opening of the Exhibition, a colloquium will take place to present the Beira Central Station project, with contributions from Paulo Lourenço and Elisiário Miranda, moderated by Luís Martinho Urbano.
 
It will be open for visiting until 18 June, in the Lopes Martins Mansion (Marques da Silva Foundation), from Monday to Saturday, between 14:00 and 18:00.
 
+ info here
 

Today, from 16:00, in the José Marques da Silva Residence-Atelier, you can now discover what the exhibition This is not just a picture: António Cardoso beyond the evidence has to reveal. Come and visit.
Entrance free.
 

With the exhibition This is not just a picture: António Cardoso beyond the evidence about to open, we publish a new Marques da Silva Foundation Newsletter.

Read here

In “Orange: a poetics of freedom and rigour”, a text dating from 1985, António Cardoso seeks the immanent poetry in the physical work of Francisco Laranjo, transforming the word itself into poetic material. It is another Selected Writings.
 
Listen here
 

The exhibition This is not just a picture: António Cardoso beyond the evidence takes a look at the life of António Cardoso, a figure who traversed multiple fields and left a legacy visible today in his artistic output, in the various generations of students he helped to train, and in laying the groundwork for what are today the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Amadeo Souza-Cardoso Museum.
This is a retrospective reading, the first to take place after his death last June, defined between Porto and Amarante, between the work developed on José Marques da Silva and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, showing the plurality of interests that moved him. Historian by training, artist by conviction, António Cardoso worked on memory without ever losing a sense of his own time.
The exhibition opens on 7 May at 16:00, in the Residence-Atelier designed by Marques da Silva. It will remain open to the public until 17 September of this year. Open from Monday to Friday between 14:00 and 18:00.
 
+ info here
 

Last Saturday, Rui Mendes led a guided tour of the exhibition Bartolomeu Costa Cabral / an archive under construction and spoke of the interventions underway at the Bloco das Águas Livres, as well as what is in development for the Castelo School and the Martim Moniz Building. It was the final guided tour of this exhibition, which can still be visited until 7 May, between 1400 and 1800 hrs, at the Marques da Silva Foundation