The Távora Cycle - Identity and Circumstance, programmed by the Museum of Porto in the context of the exhibition The urgency of the city - Porto and the 100 years of Fernando Távora, seeks to reunite former collaborators, students and friends of this Architect, but also professionals of a new generation who follow his vision and work in architecture from his founding legacy.
 
After a first session, held on 29 September, with a conversation between Luís Aguiar Branco and Nicolau Brandão moderated by Teresa Cunha Ferreira which had as its starting point, "Távora: Class and Party", it will continue on 6 October with new speakers: Domingos Tavares and Paulo Moura, moderated by Luís Martinho Urbano, Vice-President of the Marques da Silva Foundation. The theme of this next session is "Távora: Clássical and Modern".
 
This Cycle, which takes place, weather permitting, outdoors, in the amphitheatre of D. Pedro Pitões, attached to the Old City Hall, also foresees the holding of two more sessions: on 13 October, "Távora: Portuguese and Universal" (Antonio Esposito and Ana Tostões, moderation by João Rapagão) and on 20 October, "Távora: Present and Future" (Andreia Garcia and Nuno Valentim, moderation by Álvaro Domingues).
 
+ info: www.museudoporto.pt
 

With the project On the front line. The architecture of the bunker in the defence lines of Central Europe, Maria Rita Pais and Luís Santiago Baptista were the winners of the 19th edition of the Fernando Távora Prize.

The Jury decided unanimously on a proposal which it considered to be "consistent with an extremely well structured and detailed travel plan demonstrating rigorous prior preparation. The project appropriates and reformulates the very concept of travel, through the way in which the candidates thought about the relationship with the territory and the specificity in approaching each of the places.” They further specified that “one of the factors that weighed in the distinction of this proposal compared to the others, is related to its image content and fascination with these architectural objects, in some way hidden and unknown inscribing it in a reactivation of the problems of the frontier and of war which come to afflict us. The proposal seeks to discuss the past of these objects, also in Portugal, and their importance for the collective future memory.” 

The ceremony, also including a conference by the architect/photographer Duarte Belo, Uninterrupted Journey, took place yesterday, on 2 October, World Architecture Day, in the Grand Hall of Matosihos City Council. 

The Fernando Távora Prize, an initiative of the Northern Regional Section of the Order of Architects, is organised with the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation, Matosinhos City Council and the Casa da Arquitectura, being sponsored by Ageas Seguros.

Images: Alvéole 14, Saint-Nazaire, France, © LIN - Architects Urbanists (Finn Geipel + Giulia Andi) / photograph of the winners

+ info:www.ordemdosarquitectos.org.pt/sr_norte

Today we resume publishing the Marques da Silva Foundation´s Newsletter.

Read here

In keeping with what is already a tradition, next Monday 2 October, World Architecture Day, one more session of the Fernando Távora Prize will take place. Integrated into the programme of the Celebrations of the centenary of the birth of the Architect Fernando Távora, the ceremony will include the announcement of the winner of the 19th edition and a conference by the architect/photographer Duarte Belo: Uninterrupted Journey.
 
The jury for this 19th edition is made up of the actor and director Ricardo Pais, the Architect Andrea Soutinho (Marques da Silva Foundation), the Architect Ana Vieira (Casa da Arquitectura), the Architect Susana Ventura (OASRN) and Dr Maria José Távora (family of Architect Fernando Távora).

The Prize, which aims to continue perpetuating the memory of Fernando Távora, valuing the important contribution of the trip and direct contact with other realities in the training of the architect´s culture as a professional, once again has the partnerships of the Marques da Silva Foundation, Matosinhos City Council, and the Casa da Arquitectura, as well as the sponsorship of Ageas Seguros.

+ info: www.ordemdosarquitectos.org

Last Saturday, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the careers and some works by Celestino de Castro, Mário Bonito, Fernando Távora and José Carlos Loureiro were highlighted. These were the 4 architects chosen for reflection during what was the second colloquium organised by the College created by the Order of Architects, in 2016, for protection, safeguarding and valuing the built architectural heritage in the region, as a professional action and involvement in society. And one more time, the idea underlying this moment of reflection and sharing, was based on the presence of speakers, architects and non-architects, who were able to speak from a disciplinary perspective of design, but also of what comes out of a direct link with what is built. A reading given today about what distinguishes the careers of these architects, how the spaces they designed were and/or continue to be lived, framing their activity in the urban, political and social context in which this took place and took shape.
 
In common, the lives of these four architects involved not only an important and continuous design practice, but also civic participation and a teaching career, more or less long, but with a strong impact on young people aspiring to the profession they helped to form. This colloquium spoke about what they did and the heritage they left or what it means to inhabit their architecture, after an initial intervention by Gonçalo Byrne drawing the historical, national and international framework, which allows us to understand their individual civic and professional positions. It was the tracing of a background accompanied by a counterpoint to our 1920s decade, a hundred years later, and to the new challenges set for today´s architects, expressed in a desire that, even now, in a time of growing instability, Architecture can play a decisive role in creating places for life.
 
About Celestino de Castro (1920-2007) José Fernando Gonçalves and Paulo Seco were speakers. If the first offered a sideways glance on the career of the architect, the CODA for the proposals for the Avenida dos EUA, and of a man of great social and political engagement, who knew how to be modern by never forgetting that ethics should be subjugated to aesthetics; the second offered the renovation project taking place at the José Braga house in Porto, a project by Celestino de Castro of the 1950s. Mário Bonito (1921-1976) was presented by Helder Casal Ribeiro and by his own son, Sérgio Bonito. Casal Ribeiro, taking as his starting point the text of this architect, "Universality in Architecture", written in 1970, emphasised the many-sided character of his interests, then focusing on three works: the CODA, the Adjacent Islands Pavilion; the Gold Building; and the Guimarães Stadium. His son, in a two-voice intervention, based on a testimony from his brother Gabriel, refined the passion of Mário Bonito for the cinema and the way in which this is reflected in the remaining areas of his life. Alexandre Alves Costa and Carlos Martins spoke about Fernando Távora (1923-2005). Alexandre Alves Costa gave us a more intimate and close understanding of Fernando Távora, however not omitting to specify what he considers to be his contribution to the so-called Porto School, defending the idea of his fidelity to the Modern as an inconclusive thing, or the coherent search for a permanent contemporaneity; his ordering spirit, as a rule of his intervention; his heterodoxy. In his turn, Carlos Martins, former collaborator, adopted o guião em tempos feito by Fernando Távora and Luís Ferreira Alves, to structure his intervention on two referential works: the Tennis Pavilion, "obra manifesto"; and the Tower of the 24, "testamentary work". The final set of invited speakers, Nuno Brandão Costa and Paulo Vinhas, addressed the work of José Carlos Loureiro (1925-1922). Nuno Brandão Costa went through several of the works spread around Porto, some less spoken of and studied, but which through their capacity of dialogue with the location, in the description of their external lines, contributed much to a certain atmosphere of the city: the AXA building, the Hotel Dom Henrique, the buildings  in the Rua Visconde Bóbeda, the Rua Formosa, the Rua Guedes de Azevedo, and, also to end with finally, the Tribunal of Barcelos. Paulo Vinhas, describing the transformation process of the Parnaso auditorium for residential purposes showed, in the first person, what it means to "inhabit the Parnaso".
 
A full day, ending with the interventions of Pedro Alarcão and João Appleton, in a synthesis of the various talks, and by Diana Roth, on the work that the College of Architectural Heritage has been completing.
 
The Colloquium "Architects. 1920 Generation" has been recorded and should soon be available for viewing on the Order of Architects´ YouTube channel.
 
See photo album here

 

In 1969, Nuno Portas published, with the publisher Livros Horizonte and with a preface by Fernando Távora, the text prepared for the competition for professor of the 1st Group at EBAL, a cidade como arquitectura [The City as Architecture].  Written in a period of great rapprochement with the "Barcelona school", and in particular with Oriol Bohigas, given his active participation in the Small Congresses that brought together Portuguese and Spanish architects, this essay represented, according to the author, the culmination of a process of "opening up to the city" that began with his previous publication, A Arquitectura para hoje [Architecture for today] (1964). It was a critical reflection on city-territory issues, which had, since then, been reinforced with the contributions of the work developed with the students and the experimentation carried out at LNEC.
 
Nuno Portas makes a point of starting the book with a "provocation" to new architects, exposing the convictions and intentions that motivate his need to make certain methodological positions known, of the problem that moves him. It then moves on to the analysis of the topic, which it approaches from four coordinates: "Method and Project"; "Project and City"; "City and Design"; "City Design and Teaching". Each of these chapters is accompanied, at the end, by a set of illustrations and respective bibliography, which reveals a great knowledge and sense of current affairs regarding the international panorama of his time, in the field of architecture and urbanism, whether in design terms  or main theoretical currents. Research on "making the city", the concern with the key problems of architecture on an urban scale, the constant attention to housing problems, will in fact remain a constant throughout his career, well documented also in the collection donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 
Regarding A cidade como arquitectura [The City as Architecture], specifically, Tiago Lopes Dias states, in a book that this Foundation and Edições Afrontamento will soon publish, that Portas, in this essay, will establish the limits of the seductive power of avant-garde imagination and place the problems of «urban design» and «architecting for large numbers» in a non-utopian perspective. Solà-Morales, who insistently, but without success, asked him from the start of the 1970s to work on a version in Spanish, to be published by Gustavo Gilli in the "Ciencia Urbanística" collection, coordinated by him, he would continue, in 2005, to consider it a seminal book. Almost four decades later, in 2007, it was reissued, although still only in Portuguese. What is certain, however, is that the reading of this text continues to provide material for renewed reflection and maintains its timeliness and relevance, due to the lucidity and foundation of the discourse that flows in it and also because in this "process of giving meaning and form to what is eminently complex in organisation, expanded and discontinuous in space, indefinable or changeable in time: the city-territory", studied in terms of method and criticism, in this book for architects and non-architects, as Távora states at the end of his preface, "it is, after all, and only, Man who is at stake."
 
Nuno Portas was born on 23 September 1934. He is 89 years old today. Congratulations, Mr Architect!
 
About the images: cover and pages 174-5 of the book The City as Architecture (works by Grupo Juan XXIII, Fernando Távora and Álvaro Siza Veira); photographs from the Nuno Portas Collection (Castelldefels Symposium, 1972, from left to right, Oriol Bohigas, Helio Piñón, Maria Luisa Scalvini, Xavier Rupert Ventós and Nuno Portas).

Architects. Generation 1920 was the theme chosen by the College of Architectural Heritage for its 2nd Colloquium, taking place on 23 September at the Marques da Silva Foundation, in Porto. Four architects will be highlighted: Celestino de Castro (1920-2007); Mário Bonito (1921-1976); Fernando Távora (1923-2005); and José Carlos Loureiro (1925-2022). For each one, two guest witnesses and two speakers. It will be a full day, with morning and afternoon sessions, lunch included, opening with information from Gonçalo Byrne on the subject under discussion, following the panels dedicated to each of these four architects a space for discussion and the framing of the works.
 
The architects Pedro Alarcão, Diana Roth and João Appleton are taking on the organisation of this second edition, for the College of Architectural Heritage/OA, and Luís Martinho Urbano, for the Marques da Silva Foundation,  the host institution of the Colloquium. This initiative, an integral part  of the Távora 100 programme, also has the support of the businesses Diasen, SanJose, Sika Portugal and Azulima.
 
For more information on the Programme and conditions for taking part see HERE
 

Fernando Lanhas said that "looking at a chronology plan is not thinking about the events, recording the dates, the discoveries. There is a meaning to understanding the "why" of men wanting to know about things." Author of several chronologies, of the creation of the world or of the history of fossils to the history of toys, Fernando Lanhas had a "notion of the greatness of time" and an inexhaustible desire to know everything. His attention was either focused on observing microscopic phenomena or attracted by the immensity of the Cosmos. He was an architect by training (ESBAP, 1941-47). In his collection exist around one hundred documented designs which are still waiting for a more informed look.  However, from early on his interests were unfolding in other directions. Already in the first letters he exchanged with Fernando Távora*, his fellow-student and later partner, at the start of the 1940s, the importance of Painting - modern - can be seen and the desire to explore ways of dialogue between the Sciences, Arts and Letters. "I don´t waste time. […] I am continually looking for something. I am looking for an essence. I am looking for knowledge. I want to understand." (Fernando Lanhas, the 7 faces, documentary by António de Macedo, 1988). I ended by being a pragmatic visionary, something of a philosopher, something mystical, an artist with distinct work, personal, at times disconcerting, a polymath capable of acting and being recognised by his work in several fields (archaeology, astronomy, museology, ethnology and botany). He was radically himself or, as Eugénio de Andrade would say, "disjointed".
 
Between 1955 and 1962, Fernando Lanhas, who was systematically recording his dreams, dedicated himself to thinking of a House of Space, a place where the imagination, turned into the material, would expand the horizons of human knowledge to a unique scale. He searched for and collected pebbles and fossils, but never stopped looking at the sky. On the other hand, in many of his designs can be found a particular attention to the day-to-day, an awareness of urban life, the search for functional answers to the problems that have to be resolved, whether in a house, whether in a large piece of equipment. In many of them the staircase - interior or exterior, above all helicoidal - is a recurring resource. It would be a note of modernity, a plastic element and simultaneously practical, of access and connection. But it is irresistible to think that, with Lanhas, everything appears to go beyond the merely visible and one wants to propose another meaning. Among his sketches and design processes, as in the case of the Headquarters for the Association of Journalists and Men of Letters of Porto (1983-89), he will surprise us with loose writings, "steps" that allow us a closer approach to his enigmatic private mental world: "We hold our boy within us/ and we don´t say it./ Soon we didn´t feel the days/ We didn´t even know the time./ We soon learned the seconds./ It´s certainly better this way,/ to grow up and be a boy."
Fernando Lanhas was born on 16 September 1923. He would be 100 years old today.
 
* Exchange of correspondence between Fernando Lanhas and Fernando Távora (1943 and 1946) transcribed in Manuel Mendes (ed.), "My case": Architecture, imperative ethic of being. 1937-1947, Porto: Marques da Silva Foundation, FAUP, U.Porto Press, 2020, pp. 541-591.
 
+ info about this architect here
 

On 29 December 1945, José da Cruz Lima defended at the Porto School of Fine Arts his "Project for a Residential House", presented in the competition to obtain his Architect´s diploma (CODA). A copy of that design can be found in the archive of the Marques da Silva Foundation, as an integral document in its collection. It is made up of 93 written items and 8 drawings. José da Cruz Lima, in the descriptive note and justification that opens the dossier, very pragmatically dispenses with the inclusion of any preamble, theoretical reflection or urban framework. It is intended that its reading gives "a secure idea of the proposed programme" and that it shows "with sufficient clarity the way in which it was resolved." It focuses, therefore, on the presentation of the project or, as Manuel Botelho would say in "The 40s: The ethics of aesthetics and the aesthetics of ethics",  allows the objectual character of architecture to prevail.
 
But in his collection can be found other documents which allow us to know that the CODA, in a procedure that was current, corresponded to a design for a real client, the industrialist Manuel Rodrigues da Silva,  a married man, and that the residence, intended to house the couple, a daughter, her "foreign" teacher and a servant, would be built in Arrifana (Aveiro). And there is also an interesting set of sketches that bear witness to the path taken, revealing some of the questions that the architect asked himself. Records dating back to at least October 1944, which, in addition to defining their author´s style, also record a way of thinking about architecture through drawing.
 
José da Cruz Lima was born on 9 September 1910.
 

The photographs are separated by 25 years. Both refer to sessions paying homage to José Marques da Silva and both were taken at the Porto School of Fine Arts; in both, and for different reasons, the honoured figure is absent, but in both cases we can identify Maria José Marques da Silva.
 
In the first, which an inscription on the back tells us that it is around 1928, Marques da Silva would be one of the elements to occupy the table presided over by Guedes de Oliveira tpwards whom the eyes of the public were directed. The session had been an initiative of students from the Special Course in Civil Architecture, with Luís Benavente as their spokesperson. In this view of the room, facing the audience, the gaze falls on the lower right corner of the photograph, where three female figures stand out: Maria José Marques da Silva (almost 14 years old at the time), her mother, D. Júlia, and her aunt, D. Amélia Lopes Martins. A few years later, Maria José would begin her journey at that same School, which she would attend between 1933 and 1943.
 
Other tributes to her father would eventually happen, either on the initiative of the students (1939), or on the initiative of the School Management (1941). Maria José had, in the meantime, become the first woman architect at the Porto School and practised architecture in a joint studio with her husband, also an architect, David Moreira da Silva.
 
The second photograph takes us back to December 1953. The focus is now not on the public, but on the table of honour at the Solemn Session, chaired by Carlos Ramos. It was one of the acts of the tribute programme to José Marques da Silva, organised by the Porto High School of Fine Arts, the National Academy of Fine Arts, the National of Architects and some of Marques da Silva´s disciples, six years after his death. Maria José, after unveiling the facsimile of her father´s signature on the facade of the S. João Theatre the previous day, spoke as the daughter of the honoree. She would also participate, showing her work, in the exhibition and catalogue then held.
 
But defending her father´s legacy would be, until the end of her life, a constant aim of Maria José Marques da Silva. In 1986, as President of the Northern Regional Section of the Association of Portuguese Architects (1984-87), she was responsible for leading the organisation of the fourth edition of the AAP Congress, which would take place this year in Porto, and, jointly, the exhibition J. Marques da Silva, Architect, 1869-1947, at the Casa do Infante. It would be in the context of this last celebration that would be made public, for the first time, the desire to create a foundation.
 
Maria José Marques da Silva was born on 7 September 1914.
 

Throughout one year there will be more than thirty initiatives which will celebrate, in various cities in the country, the centenary of the Architect Fernando Távora.

The programme begins today, with the opening of the exhibition "The urgency of the City - Porto and 100 Years of Fernando Távora", in the Former Town Hall (House of the 24), in Porto, following tomorrow, on the day of the anniversary, 25 August, the opening of the exhibition of the Gallery of the Florbela Espanca Library, in Matosinhos.
October will be the month in which begins the programme of initiatives organised by the Order of Architects, the Marques da Silva Foundation, the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, Department of Architecture, University of Coimbra and School of Architecture, Art and Design, University of Minho.

Via the website Távora100.pt you can follow what is happening, as well as on the Instagram page távora_100 where, from today, daily images will be published, news and other information relating to Fernando Távora.

+ info: here / Távora 100

With "All the Words" and the figure of the writer Manuel António Pina highlighted, the 2023 edition is almost about to begin. In this return to the Palácio Gardens, the Marques da Silva Foundation will also be present, with some of its titles available at promotional prices in Pavilion 27 of the U.Porto Press, the publisher of the University of Porto, and in the Pavilion of Edições Afrontamento.

The Fair opens on 25 August and will continue until 10 September.

The opening hours are from Monday to Friday, at 12:00, and on Saturdays and Sundays, at 11:00. Visits can be made until 21:00 hrs, from Sunday to Thursday, and until 22:00 hrs on Fridays and Saturdays.
 

+ info: www.feiradolivro.porto.pt
+ info: www.up.pt.press

The exhibition  A Urgência da Cidade - O Porto e 100 Anos de Fernando Távora / The Urgency of the City - Porto and 100 Years of Fernando Távora, with general coordination by Jorge Sobrado and curated by Manuel Real, will open, at the former Town Hall, on 24 August, thus reopening to the public this symbolic space, also known as "House of the 24", designed by Fernando Távora between 1995 and 2003.

The Exhibition, the first moment of a wide celebratory programme of the centenary of the birth of the Architect Fernando Távora - Távora 100-, which will run on until September 2024, addresses "the history of the city, the place and the iconography of the municipal power, but also its contemporary reincarnation", launching at the same time a look at the life and work of Fernando Távora, a unique figure, through his training, thinking and activity.

This initiative of the Museum of Porto has also been supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation, in whose Documentation Centre is held the important and vast archive and library of the Architect Fernando Távora.

The Exhibition will remain open to the public until 29 October and can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday, between 1200 hrs and 1900 hrs.

+ info: www.museudoporto.pt

Last Friday, the Foundation Gardens opened to let children and adults enter. In a relaxed manner, Artur Prudente presented his installation to those who were arriving. This work of (re)construction of the landscape, with the focus on zinc engravings, was the result of his artistic micro-residency, which will also include a publication, also a reflection of his work in technological archaeology in relation to printing.

The month of August is here, but we are already preparing what will happen from September onwards at the Marques da Silva Foundation. Enjoy the holidays!
 

See photos  finissage

Construction of the Landscape
 

On 23 September, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, the 2nd Colloquium promoted by the Architectural Heritage College will take place. "Architects. Generation of 1920" will be the theme of this edition and the participation of Gonçalo Byrne for the opening conference, and the interventions of José Fernando Gonçalves and Paulo Seco on Celestino de Castro, have already been confirmed; Gabriel Bonito and Helder Casal Ribeiro on Mário Bonito; Alexandre Alves Costa and Carlos Martins on Fernando Távora; and Nuno Brandão Costa and Paulo Vinhas on José Carlos Loureiro.
The architects Pedro Alarcão, Diana Roth and João Appleton took on the organisation of this second edition, by the College of Architectural Heritage/OA, and Luís Martinho Urbano, by the Marques da Silva Foundation, the institution hosting the Colloquium.
More information about the programme and how to apply will be announced soon.

+ info: www.ordemdosarquitectos.org
 

Yesterday the second part of "Saal - Miragaia" took place", an initiative of the Confederation - theatrical research collective designed from Ricardo Medina´s residence. The moment included a tour of the territory, passing through the arcades of Miragaia, by Monte dos Judeus and Calçada das Virtudes; and the launch of a notebook, designed by Macedo Cannatà, which now shares the result of the investigation that was carried out on "Operation Miragaia", developed between 1975/76, coordinated by Fernando Távora. The work of document collection and historical framing carried by Ricardo Medina was shaped by the search for understanding of the ideas that supported the proposal then presented. Through it he tried to embody a reflection on what was left of this unbuilt project, on what remains (in)visible from the humanist vision of Fernando Távora and which continues to have meaning in our time.
 
Anyone interested in the notebook just needs to contact the Confederation via email: online@confederacao.pt.
 
This research project developed as part of the Culture in Expansion programme was supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 

António Cardoso, the author of the book The architect José Marques da Silva and the architecture in the North of the Country in the first half of the 20th century, played a decisive role in the process of creation of the Fundação Marques da Silva Foundation and the construction of the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Municipal Museum. A historian by training, an artist by conviction and a communicator of excellence, he worked on memory without ever losing the sense of his time. He was born in Amarante, on 21 July 1932, and died in Porto on 3 June 2021.
 
In 2022, at the José Marques da Silva Residence Atelier, the exhibition opened "This is not just a painting: António Cardoso beyond the evidence". We now share the testimony of Susana Cardoso, who took part in the opening session in the dual capacity of daughter and curator. A more intimate memory that lets you see how public and private intersect in this unique figure.
 
To read, click here: António Cardoso para além da evidência [António Cardoso beyond the evidence]
 

We are launching today, on a day of homage to Alexandre Alves Costa, one more edition of the Marques da Silva Foundation Newsletter. We begin by giving news of an exhibition that is about to end, while another is preparing to arrive, but there is much more to discover ...
 
Read here: Newsletter | July

 

There is a new tool available to everyone, the website heritageatlasporto.pt, a "repository" designed to host a wide range of data relating to intervention projects on the built environment. Structured on the basis of a common matrix - architects trained at ESBAP - it shows 150 works which are presented to us through photographs, maps, testimonies, descriptive memories of the respective authors and other archival documentation, as well as through the redesign of the project, where the reds and yellows are assumed to be key guidelines for reading the meaning of the intervention carried out. A work of systematisation, going through the memory of the process of each project, that is, the before, the during and the after, and which unfolds in an editorial project, parallel and transversal. This collection of information, neither exhaustive nor conclusive, intends to enable multiple approaches, whether on the knowledge of the objects themselves, the intervening buildings; be it about the authors of the projects and about that territory common to all that is the school of Porto; whether as a pedagogical tool for the new generations of students or as a contribution to renewed reflections on the current practice of intervention in heritage.
 
This research, coordinated by Teresa Cunha Ferreira and Rui Póvoas, was developed within the framework of the FCT project Atlas of the Architectural Heritage Project: Contributions from the Porto School, at CEAU/FAUP, and has been supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 
The new website and the editorial project, both still in progress and being updated, but where the selected works make clear the diversity of paths taken, were presented at the New/Old Colloquium: School of Porto, held on 10 July, at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto. The guest lecturer was Martin Boesch, who addressed, in the course of his presentation, the research/exhibition on Tessenow (Mendrisio, 2022), the project developed for the Kurtheater, in Baden, and his teaching experience in Mendrisio. During the morning, the New/Old coordinators, David Ordonez Castañón, José Miguel Rodrigues, Mariana Correia and Gonçalo Canto Moniz, also took part. In the afternoon, the programme focused on design practices shown by the authors themselves: Adalberto Dias, Sergio Fernandez, Alexandre Alves Costa, Pedro Ramalho and João Mendes Ribeiro. The day concluded with a final debate, moderated by Jorge Figueira and Nuno Valentim.
 
See website: www.heritageatlasporto.pt
See photo album of the colloquium
 

25 August marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Fernando Távora and a number of institutions have come together around the common desire to celebrate his life, his work and his legacy. Fernando Távora was an architect with an unusual cultural and intellectual depth, someone who lived his present intensely, but with a path and lines of thought that project him beyond his time. The centenary will now be the opportunity to renew readings about the meaning of this legacy, to promote debates and revisitations, to affirm the contemporaneity of his discourse. A year to summon up one hundred.

This commemorative programme – Távora 100 - constitutes a common proposal by the Order of Architects, the Marques da Silva Foundation and the three Schools of Architecture where his innovative and even (re)foundational vision was felt, the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra and the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the University of Minho. Joining them were other institutions of the initiative and who were also represented at the Programme presentation session, held on 30 June, at the headquarters of the North Regional Section of the Order of Architects (OASRN).
 
The various interventions were unanimous in recognising the importance of keeping the multifaceted heritage and “Tavorian discourse” present for new and future generations. Exhibitions, conferences, debates, guided tours, book launches, and much more, common and individual initiatives of the various institutions involved will complete this Programme that is aimed, far beyond the community of architects and the educational community, to the population in general. As of 30 June, all scheduled activities are also available on the website created specifically for this purpose: tavora100.pt.

 
+ info here
 

Fernando Távora was born on 25 August 1923. To celebrate the centenary, but also the life and work of a major figure in Portuguese culture and architecture, the Order of Architects, the Marques da Silva Foundation, the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, the Department of Architecture, University of Coimbra and the School of Architecture, Art and Design, University of Minho propose a programme of initiatives, designated Távora 100, to take place between August 2023 and September 2024, and which will be made public on 30 June.

Last Saturday, at the Marques da Silva Foundation, with the close of the exhibition "Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design" an entire programme was also concluded around the work and figure of Manuel Botelho, architect, professor, author. It was, however, just the arrival of another stage and the beginning of a new cycle, one that will allow, with the distancing of time and access to the documentation now preserved at this Foundation, a reaching of other knowledge and a renewed understanding of the work that was developed by a discreet architect, but deeply cultured and attentive.

The path taken so far by the promoters of this programme - António Neves, Bruno Baldaia and Carlos Maia - whose main objective was to give Manuel Botelho visibility and repositioning in the panorama of Portuguese architecture, included the holding of three exhibitions, where several institutions came together with contributions from many, such as the photographic records of Duarte Belo and the research of Bruno Castro. They then unfolded into multiple initiatives, from guided tours, conferences, round tables and, now, the book, Manuel Botelho: Work and Design 1980-2008. As this collective work process was developed with a future in mind, the journey through this architect´s "territory" also prepared and carried out the donation of his professional archive to the Marques da Silva Foundation and of his library to the School of Architecture of the University of Minho.

For all these reasons, the closing session, in a room that was too small to accommodate all those who made a point of attending, had a very special character. It can be said that the words that were heard above all embodied a stimulating and sometimes heated debate of ideas, a very demonstrative sign of how his path and work, his references and the way in which he made architecture, can and should be the object of analysis and reflection, material for thought. It was up to Manuel Botelho himself, with the discretion, simplicity and elegance which characterise him, to conclude the moment, in a synthesis of what design means for him: "establishing a dialogue with time, a dialogue with the place, a dialogue with the world, a dialogue with man."

As the curators write in the opening text of the book, "the work of an architect does not end when, for the last time, the office door closes".
 
See photo album here

Tomorrow the exhibition Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design closes and all are invited.
It begins at 1530 hrs, with the launch of the book Manuel Botelho. Work and Design 1980-2008, which will be introduced by the editors António Neves, Bruno Baldaia and Carlos Maia, and by the editorial coordinator, Pedro Baía.
Soon to follow, at 1600 hrs, the round table moderated by Jorge Figueira begins, with Carlos Machado, Manuel Mendes, Maria José Casanova and Pedro Bandeira.
And, clearly, we are counting on your presence!

+ info here

 

It was at the invitation of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira that Alexandre Alves Costa travelled to Avis, to visit the branch of the Caixa Geral. From the exercise of looking should result the exercise of writing. And so it was, with the impressions of that trip to Avis, under a scorching sun, recorded in the article "The construction of Geometry" that the magazine Architécti would publish in 1993. But this is far from being the first meeting between these two archtects, despite the very different paths they both followed.
 
Alexandre Alves Costa, the guest of the fourth session of the cycle "Meetings With", met Raúl Hestnes Ferreira during childhood, on joint vacations in a distant time. He crossed paths with the student Raúl, when the latter came to the Porto School of  Fine Arts and completed his Special course (the first four years) in this city. Much later, both would become professors at the Department of Architecture in Coimbra. Throughout their lives, despite their very different ways of doing architecture, they continued to nurture a mutual respect and trust that can be seen, for example, in the conversation that concludes the monograph on the work designed by Hestnes Ferreira, published in 2002.
 
There´s nothing like coming to the Marques da Silva Foundation, on 13 May, and listening to the testimony of Alexandre Alves Costa, in the first person, about what his memory retains from this distant proximity with Raúl Hestnes Ferreira. The session will be moderated by Alexandra Saraiva, the main curator of the exhibition HESTNES FERREIRA - FORM | MATERIAL | LIGHT, and begins at 1530 hrs. Entrance free, subject to the availability of space.
 

The last day of the exhibition Manuel Botelho Cartography: Work and Design, 6 May, will be marked with the launch of the monograph Manuel Botelho. Work and Design 1980-2008 and with a round table.
 
The book, which traces an unprecedented retrospective of the career of the architect Manuel Botelho, brings together, over 360 pages, a selection of 27 works and designs, as well as a set of original essays by Carlos Machado, José Manuel Soares, Jorge Reis, Victor Mestre and Bruno Baldaia. It will be presented by the editors António Neves, Bruno Baldaia and Carlos Maia, and by the editorial coordinator Pedro Baía. This is a publication by Circo de Ideias and is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation. The session starts at 1530 hrs.
 
The round table, starting at 1600 hrs, will be moderated by Jorge Figueira and participants will be Carlos Machado, Manuel Mendes, Maria José Casanova and Pedro Bandeira. A panel made up of former collaborators of Manuel Botelho and, above all, by architects and researchers who have been dedicating themselves to the study and criticism of Portuguese Architecture, in an attempt to respond to the challenge of positioning the work developed by this architect.
 
Entrance is free, subject to the availability of space.
 
+ info here
 

In the second session of the cycle Spaçe, Writing and Thinking, with Daniel Tércio assuming the role of interlocutor for the organisers/moderators Gonçalo Furtado and António Oliveira, writing gave way to movement, the word to the dancing body. It was another approach to the concept of "space" as a converging theme of different disciplinary approaches, a structuring and transversal idea of this initiative to materialise in four conversations.

The Visual Arts were Daniel Tércio´s first area of training, but his interests are varied, including Literature (he is a published author of science fiction works), Architecture (an attention present since childhood, also experienced through his architect brother, who invited him to collaborate in architectural projects, and one of the areas of thought that he has been following), Philosophy (in particular the field of Aesthetics) and Ecology (in a rethinking of the concept of Nature in tune with the path pointed out by Guattari). Dominant, however, was his fascination with Dance, the object and subject of continued study and research, questioning, observation, criticism, creation and experimental practice, a path of understanding and positioning in the world and in the time in which he lives. Interests that intersect and cross paths, both in his professional career, and becoming naturally present in this conversation that took place on World Dance Day.
 
The specificity of the moment ended by launching Daniel Tércio on a journey through the history of the ephemeral and of Dance, explaining the importance of Jean-Georges Noverre, whose birthday was 29 April 1727, for the autonomy of this form of art, as well as the relevance of his ideas. This was followed by an analysis exercise of what the organisation of space means by bodies in movement and the process of construction of Dance, emphasising what it resembles in the architect´s research process. He spoke of writing in space, of choreography, how it arises and how it can challenge both spectators and the performers themselves; of the challenge that scenography implies with the transformation of the scenic space, referring, among others, to the work of João Mendes Ribeiro and the dialogue established between this architect and Olga Roriz; and spoke of costumes, another of the components that interact with movement, citing as an example Picasso´s creation in Parade. The concept of heterotypy, the notion of space-time, interior space or virtual space represented other ways of analysing Dance as the movement of a body in resonance with its surroundings, of the sphere of a body that intersects with others, of the pulsation and intentions that always guide its movement in space. And beyond the real, scenic and urban spaces, he also passed through utopianly imagined dystopian places and the expanded spaces made possible with new technologies. The "choreographic objects" of William Forsythe illustrated, in turn, the ability of Dance to intensify the body in space, making movement and the ephemerality of interaction with the audience a matter of constant recreation. But there were many references to other authors, creators and thinkers who were emerging in the flow of a conversation where Daniel Tércio himself demonstrated in the room how it is possible, through movement, to change and condition the relationship with space. A set of reflections to integrate, finally, the result of a search for new angles of interaction with the space-city, experiences of approximation to sensorial urbanism, potentiated by the confinement and which are exhausted in it, reinforcing even, beyond the laboratorial and artistic dimension, that long-held desire of Daniel Tércio that the Zeppelin might once again become a reality.
 
In the next session, on 20 May, it will be time for "The space of the body", with José Gil and Ana Godinho Gil.
 
See photo album here
 

On World Dance Day, the Space, Writing and Thinking cycle will bring Daniel Tércio to the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 
The Space of Movement will thus be the subject of this second session, where Daniel Tércio proposes to question the inconstant quality of the danced body. "That inconstancy, which some call ephemerality, allows us to perceive how the dancers´ bodies go from drawing trajectories between places, to creating planes, made up of multiple points, which authorise a thousand and one routes, which contract, expand and unfold into multiple possibilities."
 
The conversation will be moderated by Gonçalo Furtado and António Oliveira, the organisers of this cycle, which is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation and the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto.
 
The session begins at 1500 hrs and entrance is free. Come and take part!
 

The third session in the film and conversation cycle Housing and the city: the past, present and future of Lisbon has as its theme The housing problem: SAAL operations, participation and democracy.

The screening of the documentary Habitat, made by Fernando Lopes in 1976, will set the tone for the conversation moderated by Ricardo Santos (CEAU-FAUP). Alexandre Alves Costa (architect), Ana Drago (sociologist) and Gonçalo Antunes (CICS.NOVA / NOVA FCSH) will take part in it.
 
This cycle, scheduled as part of the exhibition Housing Policies in Lisbon, from Monarchy to Democracy, which is supported by the Marques da Silva Foundation, is organised by the Municipal Archive of Lisbon, in partnership with the Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences, in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the New University of Lisbon (CICS.NOVA). The session, with free entrance, begins at 15:00.
 
+ info: http://arquivomunicipal.lisboa.pt
 

António Menéres always liked to travel and take photographs. And he did it constantly, often returning to places frequently visited and photographed, as in the case of Vilarinho das Furnas.
In 1962, António Menéres had decided to visit the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Peneda, in Gerês, together with two friends from Leça, his cousin, José Clemente Menéres, and Rui Leuschner Fernandes, a childhood friend and the only one who owned a car at that time: an “arrastadeira”, or rather an 11 hp Citroën. But reading Jorge Dias´s book about Vilarinho das Furnas ended up leading them to a new destination, this community village in Terras de Bouro. As always, António Menéres was equipped with his Leica 3B (1938 model), which still works today.  At that time, the construction of the dam that would submerge the village was not yet considered. The photographs taken then recorded the tranquility of the village´s daily life and crystallised the image of a place where life happened, still indifferent to that unknown, albeit not very distant future.
In 2022, António Menéres returned to Vilarinho das Furnas, or rather, to its ruins, made visible by the in water levels. He was accompanied by Pedro Borges de Araújo, Anni Gunther and Fernando Barros. In his hands, a sign of the new times, he now had a Leica Digital, and, in his eyes, the recognition of the place he had known and which now emerged from the perspectives and angles chosen to capture the skeleton, the phantasmagoria of the village. The photographs there are confronting a before and an after, giving voice to a past and present time, but also bearing witness to the attention of an architect with a photographer´s soul to the territory.

António Menéres was born on 26 April 1930. Congratulations, Mr Architect!
 
See video montage of some of the photographs mentioned  here
 

Caminha is a territory well known and appreciated by Sergio Fernandez, who had the iconic Vill´Alcina built there, his holiday retreat. But it is also a landscape with which he has established other connections that punctuate his professional and even teaching practice, as is the case with the Urbanisation of Quinta do Rego which, in 1983, was the subject of the entrance exams for the position of Professor at the Porto High School of Fine Arts.
 
The Urbanisation of Quinta do Rego is a project by Sergio Fernandez´s and Alexandre Alves Costa´s Atelier 15, begun in 1980 and to which the perspective published today belongs. Although altered, this residential property, due to its volume, the interplay between interior and exterior spaces, and the intense colour given by the exposed brick on all its facades, now stands out in the eyes of those who visit Moledo do Minho, a seaside resort in the municipality of Caminha.
 
Despite the Urbanisation being located close to a national road, the possibility of interference from car traffic and the northerly winds that often plague the region was counteracted by the design solution adopted. The ensemble faces the beautiful sea of Praia de Moledo, forming a collective outdoor patio, thinking about children and permanent contact between all its residents, a safe space that does not fail to preserve the intimacy of the inhabited spaces. The complex also has provision for parking spaces, demarcated by a portico system, and a limited line of commercial establishments at the entrance. The authors of the project even assume, without complexes, the influence of Leslie Martin´s architecture in the design of the project, but they always kept in mind the uniqueness and beauty of the landscape where they would intervene, in an express desire to respond to the wishes of those who might choose to live here.
 
Sergio Fernandez was born on 25 April 1937. Congratulations, Mr Architect!
 

At a time when the Days of Dance festival is touring the city´s stages, the cycle SPACE, WRITING and THOUGHT, organised by Gonçalo Furtado and António Oliveira, brings Daniel Tércio to the Marques da Silva Foundation.

The motto for what is the second of the four conversations which, throughout this Cycle, seek to address, from a multidisciplinary perspective, the concept of "space", was thus launched by the guest of this session:

"Assuming that dance, like architecture, produces space, I intend to question the inconstant quality of the danced space. This inconstancy, which some refer to as ephemeral, allows us to perceive how the dancers´ bodies go from drawing trajectories between places, to creating planes, made up of multiple points, which authorise a thousand and one routes, which contract,  expand and unfold into multiple possibilities."

Daniel Tércio was a Professor at the University of Lisbon, having taught courses in the History of Dance, Aesthetics, Movement and Visual Arts. Until 2021, he coordinated the doctoral programme in Human Motricity, in the specialism of Dance, and was a board member of the Institute of Ethnomusicology - Centre for Studies in Music and Dance. As a dance critic, he has been a regular contributor to the written press since 2004. His interests range from the aesthetics and history of dance to cultural studies, iconography, digital technologies and city studies.
 
The conversation, which takes place on World Dance Day, 29 April (Saturday), will be moderated by the organisers. It begins at 1500 hrs and entrance is free.
 

It was in 1989 that Bernardo Miranda met Raúl Hestnes Ferreira. That was the year in which, coming from Barcelona, he began a collaboration in the Largo da Graça atelier that he thought would be brief. However it was not just the scheduled month, but about 10 years connected to that difficult to define space, marked by the unusual personality of Hestnes Ferreira. And when Bernardo Miranda finally abandoned his atelier work, the estrangement, the professional relationship with the architect, with the mentor, had already given way to a friendship that, until the end of Hestnes Ferreira´s life, deepened and gained contours of an almost filial nature. However, their life paths were also similar due to their connection to ISCTE. Raúl Hestnes Ferreira began designing the first buildings for the Campus in 1972. It was with the Autonomous Wing, INDEG and Building II that this then became common territory in terms of architectural design, but also because of the fact that Bernardo Miranda, with the approval of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, moved from the project to the institution´s teaching staff. A time at which the decision to undertake a doctorate in Porto was also made with the support of Hestnes Ferreira and Alexandre Alves Costa. Already at this time, with the "operating room" installed in the Autonomous Wing Building and the awareness of the profound habitability of this space, Bernardo Miranda returned to the project. ISCTE is once again going through a cycle of construction and expansion, reflected both in the interventions recently carried out at the entrance to Building I and on the 4th Floor of the Autonomous Wing, as well as in the planning of new buildings in Lisbon and Sintra.
 
In what was the third session in the "Meetings With" cycle, Bernardo Miranda traced the evolutionary line of ISCTE´s constructive process and underlined the intense experience of working with Hestnes Ferreira, the free way in which he gave himself to the project, in a freedom that was not incompatible with great demand and rigour; he spoke of the understanding that, over time, he gained of his architecture and of his working method; he also underlined the respect he had for his students and the importance of people and the affections which, in the last years of his life, he was allowing to be seen. From him he learned, with regard to a window onto the Autonomous Wing, that not everything has to have a justification.
 
See the photo album here
 

On World Book Day and with the José Forjaz archive almost arriving at the Marques da Silva Foundation, coming from Mozambique, there´s nothing like suggesting a return to the reading of Pensar Arquitectura [Thinking Architecture], the book that brings together a vast collection of texts written by José Forjaz over time, where the word is called upon to express his own thinking about a condition, that of being an architect, and about a practice, that of architecture and teaching. Here can be found communications and conferences, responses to various invitations or just separate records where there are reflections, declarations, complicities, thoughts that reflect the evolution of their author´s perspectives and concerns. And here also can be followed a creative path formed from the images that illustrate it, in parallel with the texts, even if lacking an immediate relationship with the written word.

This is not the first book by José Forjaz, who had already published Entre o Adobe e o Aço Inox [Between the Adobe and the Stainless Steel] in 1999, but this book, edited by Kaleidoscope, was launched at the Marques da Silva Foundation in May 2018, in a meeting that was also attended by Francisco Keil do Amaral and Elisiário Miranda. Four years later, in 2022, the architect´s archive was donated to this Foundation which is now preparing, finally, to receive it and make it known.
 

With the arrival of Bernardo Miranda at the Marques da Silva Foundation as part of the Meetings With cycle, and of Daniel Dércio as part of the Space, Writing and Thinking cycle, highlighted, we publish today the Newsletter for the month of April.
 
Read here

This is a Meetings With week. The next session of this cycle will take place next Saturday, with Bernardo Miranda as guest, current Vice-Rector of ISCTE and former collaborator with Raúl Hestnes Ferreira. It is clear that highlights will be the various designs developed by Hestnes Ferreira for ISCTE, as well as the sharing of memories which Bernardo Miranda holds from his experience of working in the atelier. It should be noted that the four buildings which make up the ISCTE Complex, in the area of Lisbon University City, were all planned by the architect Raúl Hestnes Ferreira, a unique evolutionary process that began to take place in 1976, with the start of construction of the ISCTE I building, where the Esplanada Pavilion would later be integrated, which the drawing documents and where the game with the building´s dominant orthogonal geometrical configuration is perceptible.
 
Moderated by Alexandra Saraiva, this is the third of the five Meetings proposed in the context of the exhibition HESTNES FERREIRA - FORM | MATERIAL | LIGHT. The session begins at 1530 hrs and entrance is free, subject to the availability of space.
 

+ info here

In 2022, the Municipality of Cantanhede communicated its intention to build an outdoor swimming pool in the garden area adjacent to the Municipal Swimming Pools, a "modern and versatile" sports complex, allowing, in addition to the practice of various sports, the holding of National Swimming Championships.

The origin of this infrastructure dates back, however, to the start of the 1980s, when the Municipality announced the decision to make a long-term dream of the population come true, the construction of an indoor swimming pool, next to the Pinheiro Manso school area. Five years later, on 22 December 1986, the Diário de Coimbra published the news of the opening to the community of the new enclosure that included, in addition to the Swimming Pool, the changing rooms, a learning pool and, in annexed outdoor spaces, two tennis courts and a double use batting wall. Well equipped, the complex even provided for the use of solar heating. It had been opened by the Secretary of State for Youth and Sports, and had been welcomed with pride and satisfaction by the local community. Shortly afterwards, in January 1987, the same newspaper reported on the wide use of this sports infrastructure and the great interest aroused, even in neighbouring municipalities. The town was on the "path of progress" and swimming had become a modality accessible to all.

In the press at the time, it was only revealed who was responsible for the innovative project: the architect Manuel Teles. And there were several works developed by Manuel Teles for his native region, Coimbra, and for Cantanhede in particular, despite having adopted Porto, the city of his training, to live and work. The first project he was asked to carry out for the Town of Cantanhede, still from his atelier in the Rua de São Lázaro, dates back to 1970: the Partial Urban Rehabilitation Plan for the Town´s Northern Expansion Zone. The Cinema would follow (1976); the Housing Complex (20 houses integrated in a continuous block) for the Housing Development Fund (1977); the PSP squadron (1979); the Partial Urban Rehabilitation Plan for the Town´s Southern Expansion Zone (1980);  and the Plan and Allotment of the Industrial Zone (1981). The complex of covered swimming pools and outdoor spaces, started in 1981, and the last project for Cantanhede documented in the archive donated to this Foundation, would already be carried out in the atelier on the Rua da Alegria, where, from 1984 onwards, Octávio Alves also collaborated as a trainee architect.

Manuel Teles was born on 16 April 1936.
 

On 18 April begins the 6th edition of the Seminar Modos de Editar [Ways of Publishing], a project coordinated by Graciela Machado and Rui Santos that focuses on the technological research carried out at i2ADS/FBAUP around contemporary production and the long history of photomechanical editing and reproduction processes. This year, the Seminar is included in the programme of the 1st research meeting of Pure Print Archeology and once again has the support of the Marques da Silva Foundation, either as a hosting space for one of the sessions, or as a privileged space for connecting some of the ongoing research and the specimens in the archive, namely zinc engravings by Marques Abreu, belonging to the collection of Maria José Marques da Silva and David Moreira da Silva.

There will be three days to reflect, test practices and present academic and artistic research exploring photomechanical and innovative processes in the field of printing. And it is in this context that Ways of Publishing, as a seminar open to the community inside and outside FBAUP, will make its contribution. This edition also includes the exhibition In Situ – Ex Situ, in the FBAUP Museum, and the launch of the books Modos de Editar: Arquivo Aberto [Ways of Publishing: Open Archive] and Photomechanical Printmaking, published by i2ADS.
 
The programme can be viewed here: Modos de Editar [Ways of Publishing]: In Situ - Ex Situ.
 

Opening on 15 April at 1600 hrs is the exhibition Sixty by Sixty. Curated by Nuno Higino, this exhibition project aims to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cooperativa Árvore [Tree Cooperative], bringing together works by 60 authors, from plastic artists to architects, who were in some way involved in its foundation in April 1963. To bring back to us the artistic environment and the historical and sociological context of that time, all the works selected have in common the fact that they were produced during the 1960s.

The Marques da Silva Foundation has also been associated with the event, providing works by Fernando Távora, Alcino Soutinho, Sergio Fernandez and Alexandre Alves Costa. Names which will be represented together with Alberto Carneiro, Álvaro Siza, Álvaro Lapa, Ângelo de Sousa, Barata Feyo, Charters de Almeida, Dario Alves, Eurico Gonçalves, João Vieira, José Rodrigues, Luis Demée, Maria Antónia Siza, Nikias Skapinakis, Nuno Barreto, Sá Nogueira, among others.

The Exhibition, an integral part of the commemorative programme for this anniversary, will be open at the Cooperativa Árvore headquarters, in Rooms 1, 2 and 3, until 3 June.
 
+ info: www.arvorecoop.pt
  

Today, 11 April, on the birthday of Manuel Graça Dias, we recover his presençe and his voice by sharing a practically unpublished recording, the interview with Luís Urbano and Francisco Ferreira at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, in July 2016.
 
And nothing like himself to tell us about his experiences: from his training to the apprenticeship in Macau, with Manuel Vicente; the meeting with Paulo Rocha; or the meaning of his architecture and the circumstances that defined some of his best known works, such as the Golfinho building in Chaves, and the Portugal Pavilion for Expo 92 in Seville, where a solid and close partnership was also established with Egas José Vieira. In this conversation, he also admits his fondness for explaining, for disseminating architecture, materialised in the written media, in television and radio programmes, in the making of short films. In essence, a retrospective look at an intense life journey that hides neither "contradictions" nor "complexities" and which has always been distinguished by a certain irreverence. Attentive to his time, Manuel Graça Dias combines the ability to think and question, to create, but also and always to discuss. It´s just that urbanity rhymes with humanity.
 
On this same day, the Order of Architects, in a ceremony that begins at 1730 hrs at LU.CA in Lisbon, will present the MGD Prize, dst - Order of Architects, 1st work to the winners of this first edition: Ricardo Leitão and Rita Furtado.
 
See the video here: Contradições e Complexidades. Manuel Graça Dias [Contradictions and Complexities. Manuel Graça Dias]

During the 1950s and 1960s, passing by the Engineering and Architecture Office of Germano de Castro Pinheiro, located in the ancient Rua de Santo António, a central street in the city of Porto, were, among others, Arnaldo Araújo, Ricardo Figueiredo, Eduardo Figueirinhas and Alexandre Rodrigues. Among the projects developed at that time in the Office, that of the Casa do Castanhal, thanks to the process and the result achieved, was one of the most cherished by Castro Pinheiro.

It began in 1960, as a commission from a friend, Nelson Quintas. It was a "total work", as it envisaged the construction, on steeply sloping land, located in Maia, of a house, an outdoor swimming pool, the layout of the garden and also the design of furniture and some details of workmanship. Germano de Castro Pinheiro sought to take advantage of the natural conditions of that land, as well as the knowledge of the way of life of the family who would live in the house to be built, determining factors in dictating its implementation, the internal distribution of spaces and its relationship with the surrounding landscape. A project with a happy ending and a House that continues to be a place of comfort and life for new generations of the family.
 
In the development of this project, Alexandre Rodrigues also collaborated, who would present it, under the guidance of Castro Pinheiro, in the competition to gain his architect´s diploma in 1965, with Carlos Ramos, Octávio Lixa Filgueiras and Viana de Lima as the jury.
 
Germano de Castro Pinheiro was born on 10 April 1913, at Figueira da Foz.
 
Picture: General implementation plan (1960-65) © Marques da Silva Foundation, Germano de Castro Archive
 

The Marques da Silva Foundation wishes everyone a Happy Easter and takes the opportunity to mention that from 6 to 10 April inclusive it will be closed to the public. Visits to the exhibitions and other activities will resume next Tuesday 11 April, according to the usual schedule, between 1400 and 1800 hrs (last access at 1730 hrs).
 

On 11 April, the day when Manuel Graça Dias would have celebrated his 70th birthday, at 1730 hrs at LU.CA - Luís de Camões Theatre, the MGD dst award - Order of Architects, 1st work ceremony will take place.
 
The Jury for this first edition, chaired by Sergio Fernandez, and formed by the architects Sofia Isidoro (by recommendation of the Ministry of Culture), Ana Vaz Milheiro (by recommendation of the Portuguese Section of the International Association of Art Critics) and Inês Vieira da Silva and Egas José Vieira (both by recommendation of the Directing Council of the Order of Architects), evaluated a universe of 31 entries according to the order of importance, value and message to be transmitted, emphasising that it is an evocation of Manuel Graça Dias to first works and the conditions associated with “architectural quality, inventiveness and environmental considerations”.
 
The winners, unanimously, were the architects Ricardo Leitão and Rita Furtado, with the "House in Freamunde", a work from scratch, built in an uncharacterised urban context. The award-winning authors say in the text that accompanies the design, setting out an intelligent and sensitive basis of work, that the house “is not and could not be pure”. A concept they approach with "an attitude where creativity is closely linked to the rigour and sense of what the living space can and should be (...) without resorting to any kind of easy exhibitionism, but of great architectural value."
 
The Jury also decided to award a first honourable mention to the second most voted work, relating to the entry “Residence Atelier” by the architect Maria João Rebelo, and an honourable mention to two works ex aequo to the entry “General Silveira Building” by the architects Tiago Antero and Vítor Fernandes, and to the entry “House with Many Faces” by the architect Ana Luísa Soares.
 
This Prize, which seeks to honour Manuel Graça Dias and “recognise and celebrate the quality of architecture produced by architects with recent training”, was launched by the Order of Architects in October last year and has the institutional support of the Marques da Silva Foundation.
 
+ info: www.arquitectos.pt

On 3 April at 1800 hrs, at the OASRN headquarters, the launch session of the 19th edition of the Fernando Távora Prize will take place.

The programme of the session includes the presentation of the regulations, the constitution of the new edition jury, and the conference of the winners of the 16th edition, the Architects Carlos Machado e Moura and Pedro Abranches Vasconcelos who, with the title “Stars of the Sea", present a travel itinerary through the fortifications of thePortuguese mainland coast.

The Fernando Távora Prize, an OASRN initiative, in this its 19th edition, is again in partnership with the Marques da Silva Foundation, the Matosinhos Municipal Council and the Casa da Arquitectura, as well as receiving sponsorship from Ageas Seguros.

Participation in the session is free, subject to booking and the availability of space.
 
See teaser for the Conference "Stars of the Sea"  here
+ info on the Prizes and bookings: www.oasrn-oasrn.org

Today is World Theatre Day. Are not our homes the great stages on which our lives take place? Last Saturday, at the second meeting scheduled in the context of the exhibition HESTNES FERREIRA - FORM | MATERIAL | LIGHT, with Luís Urbano in dialogue with Alexandra Saraiva, the protagonists of the session were the Casa de Albarraque and the architect who imagined it. Many stories were told: the memory of theory classes at the "lighthouse" of the College of Arts in Coimbra; what led Manuel Graça Dias to write a script for the shooting of a fictional film about the House; of the adventures that this filming involved, so that an unusual postman could deliver the "parcel". And of course there was talk about the architecture of the House, of the ascendancy exercised by Alvar Aalto´s Maison Carrée, of how the House made the site, of how from brick and plaster, despite the reduced budget, the architect pursued the desire to explore a new language. With the screening of the interview that preceded the filming, and the short film produced as part of the Silent Break project, Raúl Hestnes Ferreira took the floor and occupied the screen. He recalled his journey, the importance of his experiences, the reason for his choices, how it became possible to design that house: a meticulous work from an idea for such a bare piece of land that, at the time, from that place, you could still see the Serra de Sintra and the sea. But it was a house designed for those who were going to live in it. That is why he spoke about his father, José Gomes Ferreira, and of the trees that Rosalía, his wife, planted around it, of the character of the spaces that come together in it. When watching "The Parcel", in this dwelling fictionalised for the camera, it is however the architecture of the House, in its individuality, that asserts itself, leaving a glimpse of how it was and continues to be a stage where one feels like living.
 
See photo album of the session here
 

The archive of the Marques da Silva Foundation holds the memory of many built projects, others that were only imagined, and still others that, despite being built, due to various circumstances and despite many of them having lived through golden times, have ended up disappearing from the land. This is the case with the Avis Cinema, on the Avenida Duque de Ávila in Lisbon, a refurbishment by Maurício de Vasconcellos of the former Palace Cinema, designed by Raul Lino. Today it is a residential space but, in particular during the 1960s, it was one of the reference cinemas in the capital. The archive drawings give us back that time, even before it was, that is, the moment when Maurício de Vasconcellos thought of it and wanted it as a construction for a metropolitan area, a place with urban strength, setting the pace of cultural life in the city, where there was no absence of neon signs to show its presence. It was a careful and rigorous project, from the optimisation of the pre-existence, to the electrical installations and the acoustic treatment of the hall, in accordance with "the most modern knowledge of these materials", as the descriptive memorandum of August 1956 reminds us. From 1974, with significant deviations from the schedule, the space went into decline, eventually being demolished. The drawings and the memory of the project remain, reminding us of its most dazzling existence.

Maurício de Vasconcellos was born on 27 March 1925. He would be 98 today.
 

To link the high elevation in the Batalha area to the Ribeira elevation, the city of Porto opened, in June 1891, a funicular designed by Raul Mesnier de Ponsard, an engineer with French family origins, born in Porto, author of several constructions of this kind in Portugal. With a modern and complex mechanism driven by steam, located on the Guindais slope, next to one of the sections of the Fernandina wall and with an exceptional panoramic view over the river and the Luís I Bridge, the Funicular was celebrated as yet another symbol of progress in the city´s urban transport system. However, after just two years, a tragic accident would dictate its closure. It was necessary to wait for the urban rehabilitation plan launched by Porto 2001 - European Capital of Culture, to reconsider, at another time, the importance of its restitution. It fell to Adalberto Dias to rethink the location and its history, the pre-existing elements, ensure the connection of the area with the urban network as a whole, stabilise a route that achieves a 45º incline, and find effective and adequate technical solutions to make it happen. In 2004, the city had the Guindais Funicular in operation again, offering a short trip lasting just 3 minutes and the feeling of momentarily levitating over the river. And above the tunnel, there is not even a lack of small chimneys which resemble bottles of Porto wine. Architecture in motion.
 
Adalberto Dias, whose professional archive was donated to the Marques da Silva Foundation in 2022, was born on 26 March 1953. Congratulations, Mr Architect!
 
See the video on the work here

Tomorrow at the Marques da Silva Foundation, with Luís Urbano, the Casa de Albarraque by Raúl Hestnes Ferreira will be highlighted. It is the second meeting programmed as part of the exhibition HESTNES FERREIRA - FORM | MATERIAL | LIGHT. The session, with free entrance, begins at 1530 hrs and will be moderated by Alexandra Saraiva.
 

+ info here

“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