Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo - CESAP/ESAP, Instituto de História da Arte - FCSH/UNL
Abstract
The book now being published results from a research project entitled Southern
Modernisms that ran from March 2014 to May 2015 with FCT funding.
The aim of the project was to explore the possibility of constructing a more
inclusive, plural notion of modernism through the revision of Modernism’s
prevailing definition – its stylistic focus, its formalist and anti-representative
bias, as well as its autonomic assumptions, or, as far as architecture is concerned,
its functionalist credo. This critical undertaking was grounded on the hypothesis
that southern European modernisms featured a strong entrenchment in popular
culture (folk art and vernacular architecture), and that this characteristic could
be understood as anticipating some of the premises of, what would later become
known as, critical regionalismo. (...