Literary History and Architectural Traditionalism in Portugal and Brazil (original) (raw)

Tradition and Modernity Intertwining in the Re-presentation of Portuguese Modern Architecture: the case of the Survey on 20th Century Architecture

Southern Modernisms: Critical Stances through Regional Appropriations: Conference Proceedings, 2015

The nexus between tradition and modernity is long-rooted in the intellectual and political discourses about a Portuguese architecture identity, either as a dialogue construed as a national specificity, or as a dichotomy that stresses different actors' distinct and even opposing cultural understandings and political uses of categories of culture and time. Recently, however, the history and critique of modernism in architecture has overcome the mainstream readings of its corpus, mitigating its orthodoxy, and disclosing long-standing relationships between modern architecture proposals and vernacular settlings. Such rereading has triggered a revision of Portuguese history of architecture, in particular regarding the gate-keeping conceptions of Portugal as an isolated and peripheral country, and the political stances of particular architectural productions. This paper aims to discuss the extent of the tradition-modernity bindings in the spacialisation of a Portuguese identity in architectural discourses. In this scope, it will look into the survey on the 20th century Portuguese architecture conducted by the Portuguese architects between 2003 and 2006, as an expression of how Portuguese modern architecture is being emically construed. Taking into account its process and outcomes, and its authors' purposes and reasoning, the paper will examine its modes and hues, evaluating the dynamics beyond the production of a history of architecture and its relating to broader processes of imagining the past and culture in Portugal.

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Portuguese Plain Architecture: When history creates a myth

This paper will focus on the slight metamorphoses of architectural discourse accompanying Portuguese political and social context in the last four decades, and how the concept of Plain Architecture, as defined by the American art historian George Kubler plays a role in this progression. Kubler traveled and lived in Portugal between, during the country First Republic dictatorship, during the mid 1950s and the late 1960s, doing research for what came to be the book Portuguese Plain Architecture: between spices and diamonds 1521-1706 (1972). The premise of the book is the analysis of the architectural production during a moment of political and economical crisis. The timing of Kubler’s book publication in the early 1970s — on the brink of the 1974 revolution — accompanied a radicalization of the Portuguese architectural discourse. Kubler’s ideas were recovered in the 1990s in Portugal, not long after the tardy publication of the Portuguese translation of Kubler’s book in 1989, and became ubiquitous. More recently, in the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008, reemerged the attractiveness towards the small, the peripheral, and the radical. Eduardo Souto de Moura described his own work within the Portuguese Plain tradition. Portuguese Plain became a myth of origin.

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THE GOOD PORTUGUESE ARCHITECT - TROPICALIZING COLONIALISM: A CRITICAL READING OF THE POST-COLONIAL NARRATIVE OF "PORTUGUESE ARCHITECTURE" Cover Page

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“Widening the scope of modernism: is there room for Portuguese fascist architecture?”, em Southern Modernisms. Critical Stances through Regional Appropriations, ed. de Joana Cunha Leal, Maria Helena Maia e Begoña Farre, Porto, CEAA e IHA, 2015, p. 59-71. Cover Page

Architectural theory and the vernacular in Pedro Vieira de Almeida's writing / Joana Cunha Leal, Maria Helena Maia and Alexandra Cardoso

To & Fro: Modernism and Vernacular Architecture. J. Cunha Leal, M.H. Maia and A. Cardoso ed. Porto: CEAA, 2013, p. 105-116, 2013

"The last texts written by PVA, many of which remain unpublished, are specifically devoted to the survey published under the title Portuguese Popular Architecture, or had discussions on it at their outset. Ever since PVA first mentioned the survey in Raul Lino’s catalog (1970) a thorough historical, critical, and theoretical approach to the survey was carried out by him. The presentation of the research project Portuguese Popular Architecture. A critical look, undertaken under his coordination until September 2011, is a direct and rather important outcame of this long-standing work. This paper aims to bring in to discussion such a pervasive concern with the survey’s main questions and deep theoretical and critical implications in PVA’s writings."

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Tradition and Modernity. The Historiography of the Survey on Regional Architecture / Alexandra Cardoso and Maria Helena Maia

A. Cardoso; M.H. Maia, "Tradition and Modernity. The Historiography of the Survey on Regional Architecture" in Approaches to Modernity / Edited by Maria Helena Maia and Mariann Simon. Porto: CEAA, 2015

In this paper we intend to make a first approach on the historiography of the Survey on Regional Architecture in Portugal, in an attempt to understand how it relates to the historical and critical interpretation that its authors created, as well as to identify its divergences and convergences with current historiography. With the study of the survey and its subsequent publication titled Popular Architecture in Portugal (1961), we pretend intend also to understand how its existence was used in the construction of the critical discourse about the links between tradition and modernity in the context of Portuguese modern architecture evolution.

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Portuguese Plain Architecture: A journey since the 1950s to the present

This presentation will focus on the slight metamorphoses of architectural discourse accompanying the Portuguese political and social context in the last six decades, and how the concept of Portuguese Plain Architecture [PPA] as defined by the American art historian George Kubler (1912-1996) plays a role in this progression. The Portuguese architect Duarte Cabral de Mello (1941-2013) compared the understated character ofVítor Figueiredo’s (1924-2004) architecture with the essential nature of Portuguese Plain Architecture (Mello 1979). Kubler’s thesis implied that the nature of Portuguese architecture built between 1600 and 1800 did not fit in any of the established categories of art history, and thus was an appropriate case study to demonstrate the thesis that Kubler had already put forward in his book The Shape ofTime (1962): “... no style or class excludes the simultaneous possible presence of many other prior classes” (Kubler 1972, 4).

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Modernity and Continuity: Alternatives to Instant Tradition in Contemporary Brazilian Architecture

At the end of the 1970s, Critical Regionalism questioned the homogenization of architecture brought by modernism. The movement claimed a necessity for the mediation between ‘universal civilization’ and ‘local culture’, establishing the possibility for a meaningful yet progressive architecture to take form. In the face of a visible standardization of architecture throughout the globe, as portrayed by the reckless replication of design solutions disregarding local environmental and social conditions, the idea of Critical Regionalism seems relevant. However, the critical part of this discourse must be reframed in order to release the ‘local’ from its aesthetic form, establishing new possibilities for architecture to address its context in innovative ways. This paper examines examples of both purely aesthetic regionalism and creative solutions for addressing local issues. The study focuses on both past and contemporary Brazilian architectural solutions. Brazil currently faces a continuous increase in its construction market, but it is in past solutions that the most creative locally inspired architecture can be found. Through the examination of such examples, the paper will explore both the problems and potentials of a critical and regionalist Brazilian architecture.

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Architectural theory and the vernacular in Pedro Vieira de Almeida's writing

The last texts written by PVA, many of which remain unpublished, are specifically devoted to the survey published under the title Portuguese Popular Architecture, or had discussions on it at their outset. Ever since PVA first mentioned the survey in Raul Lino’s catalog (1970) a thorough historical, critical, and theoretical approach to the survey was carried out by him. The presentation of the research project Portuguese Popular Architecture. A critical look, undertaken under his coordination until September 2011, is a direct and rather important outcame of this long-standing work. This paper aims to bring in to discussion such a pervasive concern with the survey’s main questions and deep theoretical and critical implications in PVA’s writings.

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Architectural theory and the vernacular in Pedro Vieira de Almeida's writing Cover Page

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The Science of Architecture. Representations of Portuguese national architecture in the 19th century World Exhibitions: archetypes, models and images Cover Page