The fantasy of reality : on the design drawings of Álvaro Siza Vieira

Intelligence, creativity and fantasy / Proceedings of the 5th International Multidisciplinary Congress; coordenação de Mário S. Ming Kong, Maria do Rosário Monteiro, Maria João Pereira Neto. - Londres : CRC Press, 2019. - P. 137-142.Fantasy – understood as a fiction, an extravagance, or a reverie – is often perceived as being at odds with reality, a way of eluding its own contingencies, with reality and fantasy arguably existing in different spheres. But fantasy is also perceived as being intertwined with reality for always being rooted in it, with reality and fantasy accordingly being distinct from each other only on the surface. This paper aims to discuss the fantasy that would seem to pervade some of the design drawings made by the architect Álvaro Siza Vieira. Siza Vieira has always relied on the drawing to immerse himself in and to amble through the architectural objects as they are being defined. Many of the said drawings establish a more immediate relationship with what they purport to represent; others, on the contrary, deliberately avoid such a relationship – reality instead appears altered, if not to say distorted, often being populated with weird figures, as if the architectural object being defined were part of a fantasy. Nevertheless, these drawings also allow for an understanding of their objects, and the place of fantasy in Siza Vieira’s design process is one deserving of assessment. With a nod to the title of one of his books, perhaps one can say that Siza Vieira finds in fantasy a way ‘To Imagine the Evidence’ of his architecture

The rediscovery of Japan : the critical reception of japanese architecture in Portugal after the opening of Japan to the west

Athens Journal of Architecture. - e-ISSN: 2407-9472.- V. 9, Issue 1,(Janeiro 2023) . - p. 55-82.The aim of this paper is to provide an initial understanding of the reception given to Japanese architecture in Portuguese books and architecture-related magazines published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two separate periods in said reception can be considered: that of the first encounter, which is directly connected to the re-establishment of ties between Portugal and Japan after the latter’s re-opening to the West in 1854, which anticipated the Portuguese adherence to Japonisme; and that of the second encounter, now in the early twentieth century, which took place against the background of discussions around progress and the affirmation of an own cultural identity in Portugal. Despite this reception, the actual influence of Japanese architecture on Portuguese works of architecture built in the period was practically zero, reflecting a certain difficulty of understanding and absorbing Japonisme on the part of the Portuguese art scene. An influence can be found only in a small number of interior designs and the design of a sales pavilion for a faience factory. The assessment of the reception given to Japanese architecture is based on interpretative-historical research, as defined by David Wang: “We define interpretative research specifically as investigations into social-physical phenomena within complex contexts, with a view toward explaining those phenomena in narrative form and in a holistic fashion.”1 The publications mentioned form the fundamental research documentation. The understanding of Japanese architecture in the two aforementioned periods is preceded by a contextualisation which clarifies the reception of Japonisme in the Portuguese art scene. Proceeding from the observations of David Wang, this paper seeks to form a narrative that can explain the circumstances and reasoning that determined both the understanding – or lack thereof – of Japanese architecture in Portugal and its divulgation in Portuguese publications. This matter is currently not the object of any other research project, giving this study a trailblazing character. The reception given to Japonisme by the Portuguese art scene is still in need of systematic researc

Revisiting the city of Edo and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo : unlimited organisms, between reason and emotion

Creating through mind and emotions / coordenação de Mário S. Ming Kong, Maria do Rosário Monteiro, Maria João Pereira Neto. - Londres : CRC Press, 2022. - P. 139-147.At the beginning of the Edo period (1603-1867), the city of Edo in Japan, which corresponds today to the central area of Tokyo, was the object of a profound urban transformation that was deemed necessary because of the city’s new condition as the country’s political and military center. Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), the first Shogun of the Edo period and a mentor for said transformation, devised a system of moats that spiraled outwards from Edo Castle and was to continue growing. Today, Tokyo is the city with the largest urban area in the world. In that city, the National Museum of Western Art, designed by Le Corbusier (1887-1965) in 1955 and completed in 1959, was based on the Musée à Croissance Illimitée [Museum of Unlimited Growth], an unrealized proposal the architect had presented in 1939. That museum was organized around a square-shaped nucleus, around which exhibition galleries built on pilotis could be added successively and without limit. This idea of the possible growth of the Tokyo museum was abandoned early on, but the Musée proposal continues to be pertinent. Recognizing the fact that they share structural principles based on possible unlimited growth, this paper proposes revisiting Edo and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, setting out a discussion of the respective creations as organisms that balance reason and emotion

Echoes of Japan : an interpretation of Fernando Távora’s approach to design

Modern design: social commitment and quality of life. Valencia : International Domomomo Conference, ISBN 978-84-19286-59-8. P. 742-750.“I keep a photograph of my parents taken in the cloister of the Convent of Santa Marinha da Costa in 1915 before I was even born. // Relationships, fatality.” Fernando Távora (1923–2005), a Portuguese architect who was born in Porto, Portugal and graduated from the Porto School of Fine Arts (EBAP) in 1950, brought to Portuguese architecture the challenge of seeing tradition as a fundamental element for achieving modernity. As early as 1945, the year in which he began his higher training in Architecture, he wrote the essay “O Problema da Casa Portuguesa” [The Problem of the Portuguese House], in which he formulated the connection between Modern Architecture and the traditional house. Throughout his life as an architect, pedagogue, traveller and active participant in the national and international debate on modern architecture, he at all times revealed a desire for continuity with tradition. He became a decisive figure for understanding Portuguese architecture in the latter half of the twentieth century. Távora became interested in Japan and its culture early on. He observed Japanese architecture in the various books he was to acquire from 1945 onwards. He paid particular attention to traditional architecture. In 1960 he visited Japan, attending the World Design Conference (WoDeCo) in Tokyo. The contemporary Japanese cities and architecture did not make a good impression on him. On the contrary, he found his fascination for traditional architecture validated, particularly for the harmony that comes from its unity – the unity that permeates the design of the interiors of this architecture, integrating all the elements necessary for the unfolding of daily life. Távora’s contact with Japan is reflected in some of the projects he was working on when he visited the country in 1960 – the Tennis Pavilion in Quinta da Conceição, Leça da Palmeira, Portugal, for example, as he himself confirmed. Less obvious, but no less significant, is the possibility of discerning that reflection in a more abstract, less formal way, at the level of the unity and integrative quality that was at the root of the designs for some of his works. This paper proposes a reflection on echoes of the relationship that Távora established with Japan and with its traditional architecture, in particular its interior spaces. The object of observation will be the new wing of rooms at the Guimarães Monastery Pousada, in Guimarães, Portugal, crossing the reflections contained in some of Távora’s writings with his design practice

Inhabiting the memory : the ineffable contamination

International Forum World Heritage and Contamination, 18, Naples, 2020 - Le vie dei mercanti. - Roma : Gangemi, 2020. ISBN 978-88-492-3937-9.Apropos the sculpture "House" by British artist Rachel Whiteread, Shelley Hornstein argues that architecture is something that is taken too lightly most of the time. Nevertheless, architecture accompanies our lives step for step. This accompaniment is independent of the intrinsic value of the objects in which we live. They are there and are part of our trajectory. The houses we live in are "living" witnesses to our emotions and lack thereof, our dreams and our nightmares. Houses, as witnesses, are essentially interior universes. Impregnable. Impregnable universes in which well-being and discomfort live side by side, and in which an uncomfortable feeling of strangeness can easily install itself. This uncanny strangeness, lives in our collective memory, contaminating it. House, the house that is not a house by Rachel Whiteread, and Die Familia Schneider, an installation by German artist Gregor Schneider, reveal that contamination. Whilst it is true that our habitation related memory essentially lives off a cliche of happiness, it is no less true that in its recesses, in habitation, a less clean and clear tremble survives. The depth of architecture, its weightiness, is impregnated with humanity. This is a text about the relationship between memory and habitation, and how that relationship contaminates the understanding of architecture when it is lived in

In search of Alvar Aalto : a portuguese journey in 1957

(Ever)green Alvar Aalto / 4th Alvar Aalto researchers' network seminar : seminar proceedings; coordenação de Aila Svenskberg, Mia Hipeli. - Helsínquia : Alvar Aalto Foundation, 2021. - P. 119-125.James Joyce (1882-1941) begins his book "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916), the story of the coming-of-age of Stephen Dedalus, with an epigraph from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: "Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes" [1, p. 2]. This mysterious epigraph presents a processual scenario where the figure of Daedalus, in his role as maker and in his effort to escape, becomes a shadow that is constantly present. An idea imbibed in dynamic principles associated with what could potentially exist is not indifferent to this notion of process. That idea is argued by Fritz Senn with regard to the short quotation from Ovid (43BC-17AC): “[t]he emphasis is not so much on the achievement, artes […], for that remains doubtful always, but on the process. The prerequisites are not so much erudition, though that helps quite a bit, but curiosity and versatility.” [2, p. 127]Este trabalho foi financiado por fundos nacionais através da FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., no âmbito do projeto UIDB/04026/2020

Revisiting Alvar Aalto : a re-reading of the legacy of Fernando Távora through the lens of japanese culture

(Ever)green Alvar Aalto / 4th Alvar Aalto researchers' network seminar : seminar proceedings; coordenação de Aila Svenskberg, Mia Hipeli. - Helsínquia : Alvar Aalto Foundation, 2021. - P. 249-253."For us, it was possible that, at the time, A[lvar] A[alto] was the character that appears as God to resolve tragedy: a prestigious figure solving the problems we were facing." Fernando Távora [1, p. 25-26, our translation] Fernando Távora (1923-2005), a decisive figure for the renewal of the Modern Movement in Portugal in the latter half of the 20th century, thus indicated, in a 1986 interview, the boundaries of understanding of Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) in the 1950s at the Porto School of Architecture, where he was a professor. Thirty years later, Távora concluded that Aalto's work was perhaps seen as a fashion – a formal trend – more than as a structured movement. Álvaro Siza Vieira (b. 1933), Távora's professed disciple, was one of the exceptions to Távora’s conclusion on the understanding of Aalto's work. Távora's observations are reason enough for reflection on the relationship between his own understanding of architecture and the work of Aalto. In the same interview, Távora confirmed that he "discovered that he had certain affinities with him" [1, p. 25, our translation]. While acknowledging Távora's critique of the formalistic approximations to the work of the Finnish architect, it is also worthwhile looking at an approximation to Japan and its culture, an interest in which the two men shared. The importance of Japan for Aalto is well known. The motivation Távora first had for taking an interest in Japan was his general interest in the world, an interest he developed as a student and the same interest that led him to the work of Aalto.Este trabalho foi financiado por fundos nacionais através da FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., no âmbito do projeto UIDB/04026/2020

A filmic montage : revisiting Jeanneret’s voyage d’orient

The 16th International Docomomo Conference Tokyo Japan 2020+1 : Inheritable Resilience : Sharing Values of Global Modernities / coordenação de A. Tostões, Y. Yamana. – Tóquio, 2021. ISBN 987-4-904700-69-3. – P. 1398-1403.Le Corbusier (1887–1965) had already explored, at an earlier stage in his career, the possibility of capturing architecture and the world through the filmic medium. One could argue that the relationship Le Corbusier had with film developed when he was a young man, when he was still Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, which would make an assessment of the importance of his 1911 voyage d’Orient meaningful. To a large extent the genesis of the complex relationship Le Corbusier was to establish later with architecture and with the world can be traced back to those travels; indeed, they should be seen as the very roots of his identity. This paper sets out to understand the principles that may have nurtured Le Corbusier’s future relationship with film. His like-mindedness with Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948) and the acknowledgement by both of the cinematographic qualities of the Acropolis in Athens, justify the attention that subsequent thought has given to the series of drawings Jeanneret produced of the monument. But other drawings by him should also be mentioned in this context, particularly the one he made of a house in Istanbul. The movement that is perceived between each of the drawings of the Acropolis is counterposed by the movement that exists in the interior of this drawing, which presents architecture as if observed by a gaze that moves through time, discerning in it a filmic montage that pre-announces his future approximation to architecture.Este trabalho foi financiado por fundos nacionais através da FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., no âmbito do projeto UIDB/04026/2020

Fernando Távora’s Japan through books : a fascination with tradition in search of innovation

Tradition and innovation / edited by Maria do Rosário Monteiro, Mário S. Ming Kong. - London : Routledge, 2021. - ISBN 9780367277666.Amongst the private library of the Porto architect Fernando Távora (1923-2005), who is an obligatory figure if one wants to understand Portuguese architecture in the latter half of the 20th century, are several books on Japan and its architecture. Taken together, the books reveal a sustained interest in this subject matter, an interest which had begun when Távora was still a student of architecture and for which his visit to Japan in 1960 was to be decisive for its consolidation and deepening. In an initial phase, he became interested in contemporary Japanese architecture and the Western architecture that absorbed it, but traditional Japanese architecture was to become a more permanent object of interest for him. Here one can identify a fascination with tradition, whereby tradition is understood, in a broader sense, as permanence – of values and architectural practices. However, there is also undeniably a search for innovation, whereby innovation is understood in an equally full sense, as the creation of the new, a new way of architecture dealing with modernity. Proceeding from Japan and its architecture as revealed in his books, a completely new approach, this chapter sets out to discuss the extent of Távora’s fascination with tradition as a reflection of his search for innovation

Towards a discussion of the generative condition of the model

Design/Arts/Culture. - ISSN 2732-6926. - V. 2 (2021). - p. 10-21.This paper proposes reflection on the model’s place in the definition of the architect’s thought. Architectural representation — including the model — is assumed as an instance where the design thought becomes comprehensible, and not just as a vehicle to communicate that thought. The generative condition of the model is assumed, decidedly, on the acknowledgement of the radical distinction that will always exist between the model and the object it represents. Both the apparent natural proximity between the model and the architectural objects, which is the result of the three-dimensionality and the building dimension that they both share, and the apparent natural concordance between the model and the architect's thought are called into question. Because the aim is to understand ‘how’ an architect thinks and not 'what' they think when they use a model, the subject is examined from the perspective of a horizon of ‘anteriority’, an ‘anteriority’ that is ontological and not merely chronological. The model will be examined as a means of ordering the design thought, that is, as a way of giving it existence. This reflection results from the crossing of previous research on the model and on drawing (Duarte, 2016; Rodeia, 2017). The paper proposes a confrontation of the ‘generative power’ of the drawing, as identified by Robin Evans (1997b), with the ‘generative effect’ of the model explored by Peter Eisenman (1981a; 1981b). The principle of ‘logical Argumentation’, as defined by Groat and Wang (2002), is assumed as the method of inquiry