MANUEL GRAÇA DIAS

JCL – We are delighted to start this series of interviews with the Architect, Professor and great architecture promoter, Manuel Graça Dias. I would like to start by confessing that it was one of the professors, if not the professor, who most impressed me during the University. I know that there was also a professor, I think even before the University, who marked him a lot…

I had some teachers who marked me a lot. In the Architecture course, at the former Escola Superior de Belas Artes [ESBAL], there will have been two: the sculptor Lagoa Henriques, who later taught here, at DA / UAL, and Professor Manuel Vicente, who also teaches here, at second year.

At the Lyceum I had a very interesting, very strong, very remarkable teacher, the Painter António Quadros, who ended up in Mozambique, where I was at that time, and was our Professor of drawing, in the first period of the old second year of the Lyceum (now sixth year). This passage by António Quadros in the group was, for me, very revealing, very important.

The first time he taught us, he told us to start painting an animal that didn’t exist, “with seven arms and seven legs, a crocodile tail, an elephant head, three giraffe necks”, whatever we wanted. He was in that description, and I was already furiously drawing.

I had some sheets with squares made with effort at home, as it was more or less mandatory – something that cost me a lot, blotted everything, I had to repeat it ten times until I got a decent frame – and he – “What is that sheet, why have you been wasting time doing this? ” -, turned the paper over to me, sat down and started to move the brushes in three pieces of paint: He started to mix blue with yellow and asked me if I liked that “green”. Then he started painting a little bit. “Do not like? Do you want darker? You go there and get dark. Do you want brown? Red mixtures ”. I was fascinated with that chemistry, with the possibility that we could do the color immediately, that we were in charge of the hue. It was very stimulating; I did my painting right away, filled the whole page as he had advised, with a fantastic, complex animal, full of colors.
I delivered the job convinced that I would have one more Enough. When I returned it, I was very proud because I had a Very Good! The stimulus he gave us was huge and from then on I was completely a fan of those classes; drank everything he told us.

Lagoa Henriques was our teacher in the first year, at ESBAL, of Statue Design. It was a fantastic discovery right away! Everyone was there with charcoal sticks, “fixer” to put at the end, immense bread crumb to erase, “smudges”, some felt-shaped pencil things to rub and that took away, precisely, the grace of coal, recording our risks.

We were then, with all these tricks, and Lagoa Henriques entered and started screaming! He saw some people with bread crumbs: “What is it, man? Is it for pigeons? Give it here! ” He threw the whole bread out the window, “I don’t want any bread crumbs here!”
The first exercise was to observe and register a chair. He put the chair on a plinth and asked each one to draw it from their point of view. I was very happy because I had managed to get a very credible approach to the image of the chair… the sheet of paper was huge, there was an A2, or bigger, with a horse, as it was supposed to be, pinned to the clipboard, at the top. He had designed the chair no more than ten centimeters high, in the middle of the sheet, very perfect. I was all happy to draw, and Lagoa Henriques looked at that and said to me: “Listen!” – I thought he was going to brag about me a lot, but he took me in the charcoal, drew a tiny rectangle around the chair, a rectangle that contained the chair in the middle of that whole sheet -, “Listen, your sheet of paper is this size? Why do you draw like the leaf is just that? Make a drawing in proportion to the leaf! ”, Screaming; on the second day, I really liked those classes, Lagoa Henriques and their methods. I realized that the wave was really to experience, more than to be there repeating what we already knew, and that he was completely open to being enchanted by new situations.

He proposed that we draw – at the time it was quite surprising – branches of trees that he picked up along the way or whatever he found in the trash – a strange machine, for example. Other times, it was those plaster busts that existed in the old School of Fine Arts, which reproduced classical statuary. It was intended to be a more modern look. If any black box was created on the back, to make the piece stand out, he immediately valued: “Go, that’s it! Let’s go!”. At a certain point, I left the charcoal, I started drawing with a ballpoint pen, I took watercolors, I took colored pencils, I started experimenting with other materials, the “Chinese ink” tube directly, as if it were a pen, and he always stimulates it, to celebrate! Those classes were extremely intense!

Finally, Manuel Vicente arrives, the only one, of the Architecture professors, who was interested. And it was also very un-canonical, very unorthodox. We only had classes with him for a short period of time and they were really amazing! I think he gave us two chairs, Theory of Conception – something invented at the time [1976], which later ended – and Project.

We were there for four hours talking, around a table. Every day he brought us a theme. We never projected an image, we never saw an image! The themes were books, texts, films, ideas. Things we didn’t know, nor had the slightest idea that they existed, especially those in architecture. He spoke to us of the Architecture he had seen, of the spaces he had visited, of what he had thought of on these visits, and he spoke to us of Louis Khan, when he had studied with Khan, of Robert Venturi, of Denise Scott-Brown, of Luis Barragan, of Aldo Rossi – of having gone to Gallaratese and having his mouth open under what would not be a simple expansion joint -, he started to talk to us, he asked us where we lived, what architectural experiences we had, where cities we had already been, where we had gone, where we had not been. It was fascinating.

He brought us the L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui magazine dedicated to Portugal, that issue that came out in 1976 [(# 185). Paris: May], and we were fascinated. There were works by him, by Siza, by Távora, by Byrne, by Hestnes Ferreira, by a series of people. Of course, Álvaro Siza was the only one we knew (or thought we knew); we were very ignorant, we knew nothing.

Manuel Vicente’s classes, for me, were always very reconciling with what I “was expecting”, in Architecture, but I had not yet been provided! He sent us to see things – Cova do Vapôr, for example – to observe, to take photographs. Then, slides were projected in class and commented. It was very, very exciting! But the classes were not only that, they were classes about many things, about Art, about Architecture, but also about life, about the passionate relationship of life with Architecture. For all that, I owe you a lot.

 

 

FR – These experiences that marked him, happened in a very different context from the one that the country lives today, and therefore they were teachers a little on the sidelines of that gray country and that very conservative and castrating teaching, and very academic. Today can you transpose this type of approach to your students? This irreverence that these teachers expected students to have?

I think it remains valid to have that claim, at least. Teaching at the Lycées is very conformist. I do not say that it is better or worse than the one I had. Probably, in some points it will be much better (I hope …), but in general, it remains very conformist. It continues to be a teaching not to think, which does not lead people to reflect and like to reflect, very much based on decorating – learning techniques and formulas. It’s a bit like those Road Code tests. To get the letter, everyone has to do a complementary exam of the Highway Code, right? And the engineers, or the monitors, who train in this supposed wisdom – who transmit this knowledge that is condensed in a book of twenty or thirty pages -, teach “tricks” to solve the tests! And the Lyceum is like that. The kids arrive at the University in that spirit. Very little data to think about, very little data to reflect, very little data to like to understand for themselves. They want the porridge made, they want formulas. “I gave this at the Lyceum, but it was last year, I don’t remember it anymore!”, Is a recurring phrase, which sums up this somewhat frustrated way that most people relate to knowledge.

I think there is always a register of subversion possible: to lead us to realize that it is much more interesting for us to discover things, if we are given the tools to do so. Basically, it was what happened with these teachers that I mentioned. They gave me tools to try to find things, then for me. At that time, I would not understand it completely, but today I am sure that this was the record. This field remains completely open. I think our role, as teachers, is to see what is the best way to give each one, as much as possible (and in this School, which is not a Mass School, this is, in some way, easier), to give , each one, the necessary instruments to reach knowledge, for themselves, and then, from there, elaborate, make, propose, invent, discover themselves and their capacities and limitations.

 

 

FR – For some years now, he has the experience of the large (public) school and the small (private) school. It is very different? Are there fundamental differences at this point? In this challenge of teaching architecture, in the type of exercises, in the answers that students give?

The difference will not be so much in the presence of a larger or smaller number of students, but in much more perverse situations. It resides in the fact that in the official schools there are, in general, students who come from more affluent families, who have a more qualified cultural level. And although this is not so black and white today – as it might have been here some time ago – it is perverse, because, contrary to what one might be led to think, in private schools they end up, most of the time , students from more modest backgrounds, who never had high ratings, nor sufficient incentives for study to motivate them and allow them to enter official education. Those who have this social stigma are, in most cases, the worst students and finish the Lycées with worse grades.

I am very critical of the teaching that is practiced today in the Lyceums, and I would even say, following the conversation just now, that these students who enter the officer are probably much more imprisoned, full of “good student” “tics” of “compliant”. Being a “good student” and a “doer” does not mean anything, because usually this status is achieved when one is not very creative and when one does not question the “knowledge” that the mainstream values. On the other hand, private school students, since they are not recruited among the “best”, could be a little more wild, less “regimented”, less predictable; but it is not quite like that either; none of this is completely true, even if there were such a hypothesis.

I don’t see big differences, the only thing I sometimes realize is that there are students who are a little more structured in Public Education, with the most tidy ideas, able to read a book and understand it more quickly. Able to receive a question and develop it, although a large part in a register of “well behaved girl”, and not of creative personality, with a desire to move forward. It is always necessary to fight, to end the “repetition boxes” with the “well-behaved girls”, so much to the liking of the families and put them a little more in confrontation with the world!

 

 

JCL – And in terms of these students’ professional outputs, do you think there is a difference between taking the course at a Public University or taking the course at a Private University?

I don’t know how my fellow architects see it. At the moment, the difficulties are for everyone. For a few years now, the market has become increasingly saturated, but I never looked at students who came to ask me to do an internship or to collaborate with us. I never took into account the origin of the course. I teach at two of the best schools in the country, in Porto, at FAUP, and in Lisbon, here at DA / UAL, and I know very well that there are great, very interesting students, but there are also weak or little vocational students. Schools, no matter how good, do not fail candidates, except in extreme cases. Good schools try to accompany students, try to make them better than when they arrived, more free, to learn more, to be more curious, to be more informed, to be more educated, but if there are more “hardened” cases the School will not be able to change them radically. As such, I never care much about school background, even though I think that some schools (private or public) are better than others, and that then, probably, the respective students will have had contact with more situations during the course. interesting, more creative. But, frankly, I think it’s almost like someone asking us which Primary School we attended. There are always things to learn, and a young architect, we are all aware of that, is nothing until you start working, until you spend two or three years involved in a studio. Only a few years of work can make him a good collaborator, or a good architect, or whatever. The role of the Schools of Architecture is to familiarize future architects with the area of ​​knowledge they have chosen, to open their horizons, to propose new experiences, to show them that the world is much more complex than the flat idea that the dominant culture intends get through; it is not so much to prepare “professionals” who can become effective in the “world of work”. This would be an economist view of teaching; I share a more “humanist” view.

 

FR – Basically, today’s Universities have a responsibility to provide students with critical skills, which is something they don’t learn at the Lyceum…

Sure. Neither Lycée nor the media help much. And the whole environment is very much formatted for a certain standard of living. Probably, now, things will change, with all these economic problems that we are in. But, for many years, it was bet, above all, on a kind of facility. Whatever. There was money – there seemed to be money – the world was good, it was cute, it was all really fun, you didn’t have to think too much. When you see a movie you don’t have to think too much, you eat popcorn and drink coke and it’s all a party (a party in the worst sense of the term, I like parties …). It is not even a party, that is all to pass the time. It is an expression I hate: “hobby”. Spending time is one thing for people who are waiting to die: they have to spend time until that time comes. “What are you doing? I’m doing a hobby ”.

A person who likes architecture, or any other profession, who likes the profession he has chosen or the field of study he has chosen, does not have to “spend time”. Everything should be interesting enough to interest you full time. This idea of ​​“spending time”, of having hobbies, of always being with headphones, listening to music, that kind of empty life, is very encouraged, because deep down, it guarantees docile citizens. They are people who do not create problems with the “machine”, the “superstructure”. There are no sticks in gear, with citizens like that. It is all respectful, it wants everything to have a house, a family, a car, it wants everything to learn to drive, they do the Code Exams just like the teachers say! Everything is very well educated and very docile.

It is part of any Educational Institution, be it University, Public or Private, be it Primary or Secondary, disturb a bit. It’s not hurting anyone! It is, really, messing with people’s insides. Give them a single certainty: that things do not have a single point of view. To be able to create that vision for them; because there is a great tendency to think that everything we have is more or less stable, it is acquired. And I’m not even talking about social and economic issues, I’m talking about culture itself. In the knowledge itself. Everything stable, everything easy. And people are not prepared to doubt, to have doubts, to question, to question themselves, to question life, to question the social, to question culture. I think that any educational institution should go there; you have to install this idea of ​​doubt.

I quite like making references to students’ clothing; the parallel can sometimes be forced, but it works. Because most of them don’t mind walking “silly” dressed, with knee-high boots and, at the same time, with their kidneys on display, for example. And when they are in those “well behaved” conversations, reproducing what they hear at home or on television, I shoot them, “Look there, if you want to go to the functional world, do you think your clothes work? Are you cold in your feet and not kidney cold? There is something that doesn’t quite fit! Aren’t you dressed like that because you like it? Because wants? There will be, then, a form of expression that he chose and that goes far beyond the strictly utilitarian register. Think about it, and see the implications that it may bring to other fields of knowledge! ”. Or, “Do you like to walk around with old, worn, scratched, torn pants, but then you say that the city is very ugly, very dirty, very dirty, and that political leaders should be arrested because they don’t have the buildings painted? … I mean, make aunt’s talk about the city, but she really likes to walk around with a little “worn” clothes! See if you can see why you like old jeans; isn’t it because the new jeans don’t seem to contain so much history, so long? There will probably be some charm in a certain obsolescence, in a certain skate! ” There are always many fields of this kind to stimulate them, to help them think in other ways. They are not supposed to think like me; I don’t care how they think! I want you not to think like everyone else!

 

 

JCL – After the university, the student finishes the course, is not yet an architect, the internship is the year zero, and only three or four years later he acquired skills to be in a studio. The question that I think many young architects continue to ask is: what is the next step?

The answer is classic: people are gaining practice, working in workshops with a certain routine, interning, doing inter-school with others and, at a certain point, a job appears that they already feel capable of doing alone. A friend who asks to remodel the house … this will always end up being an opportunity. Then it depends a lot on each one. There are people who are uncomfortable until they really have enough practice; there are others more daring, who think they are capable as soon as the internship is over. And they continue to be done, until at a certain point independence, even if momentary, can be acquired. A job appears that will last two or three years and that makes possible a very small structure, for you, one more friend and one more collaborator.

And then, one of the two: or everything happens at a time when there is work and some things pull others – the contractor who is going to build the house is very fond of the young architect, and asks him to design a small building for him, however a cousin sees the project, likes it a lot, and asks you to remodel the attic, in between there are some contests and there is one or the other that goes well – it is a possible way, or was it a possible way, because if there is less to do , as now, this “network” hypothesis is less likely!

But I would say that, more importantly, it is really the architect as a person. I think there is a myth, which we should also help to dismantle, from the star architects. The myth that everyone is dedicated to being a boss; not of himself – it would be interesting if people had this reasoning – but of others.

This current myth that you are going to take a course and then leave there, boss has to end. People have to realize that having a college degree is really having a specific preparation. The word superior is a little annoying, because it seems to be superior to others. If we called them specific courses, it would probably be more interesting. “I’m going to take a specific architecture course and then I leave with more preparation to start working on things related to architecture”.

 

JCL – Are there any new or brand new architects that you have as a reference? Who is following the work they are doing?

Yes, I see things from people who passed by me, who were my students (some also collaborators), and who today are architects, with very interesting work. Ricardo Bak Gordon, for example. In the first or second year that I went to Milan, he was there, in Erasmus. I met him in Milan and immediately liked him a lot, I found him very funny. The following year, he and Carlos Vilela were my students in the last year of FA / UTL. And there are people who passed by me, more recently, here at the School, who I have seen, out there, with pride and satisfaction, doing interesting things. You [João Pedro Caria Lopes] and Ricardo [Silva Carvalho], for example, who were my students in your first year and who are now my assistants.

I am not saying that it was I who “launched” these people; at FA / UTL I used to teach classes in the fifth year, I just pulled a lot for the students. I think I helped to shake up ideas already made that some would have, but, in general, the most interesting already arrived with a certain security. And the dialogue was almost from architect to architect. I really liked the fifth year for that, because I could try to pull the students to an upper platform. It is different when talking to boys from the first year, as has been my experience for the past 14 years, either in Porto or here, at UAL. We have to go down to the base enough to get a starting point that they understand, that helps and stimulates them. My best student ever, and in the first year I taught at FA / UTL, was Egas Vieira, who is my partner. In addition to a huge talent, I already had a training and ability that surprised me; that’s why we started working together.

Egas’s brother, Nuno Vidigal, as well as Pedro Ravara, with whom he formed a partnership, were my students two or three years later. It was a very good year, with Cristina Veríssimo, Mário Martins, Gonçalo Afonso Dias. Next, I remember João Matos, who now teaches in Évora, Ricardo Vieira de Melo, who returned to Aveiro where he develops a very interesting work, by Vasco Delerue, already deceased, by Luís Torgal, our collaborator in the studio for a long time. Later, when I taught Design classes in the Interior Architecture course, I was a professor at Steven Eavens and Miguel Abecasis, who are also doing very curious first works. Pedro Machado Costa was not my student but he worked with us for a couple of years, Paulo André Rodrigues also … anyway, a lot! It is all a very interesting people that passed by me and that I saw with joy becoming architects and having work that they do with honesty, with taste, with involvement, with passion! This is what I like most about these people! If I helped too, great! If not, whatever, it will not be relevant. I like to feel this passion, this involvement! Do not look at architecture as anything, done through defiance, commercially, bureaucratically.

 

FR – He is a person who reads, who writes, who thinks about what he writes and what he reads. In your work as an architect, in the design component, what is the weight of theory in your professional practice?

Of the programs I did for television, I recorded one with the architect [Manuel] Tainha. We were talking, already after filming, and I was very happy because we both agreed that writing would also be a way of designing architecture. When writing descriptive memoirs, for example, in competitions, you are in grandestress, you are very focused on that, you have to meet deadlines, you are under great tension. It is necessary to write a text, and it is necessary that the text be perceived by the jury, that it is not too long, that it is not too boring, that it is perceived very well. It is always a drama to get everything there, so that the jury does not fail to notice the essentials. And I told him that, many times, when I was making those descriptive memories, I discovered things that were not yet in the drawings and I was running to say that we had to include this, that we had to include that. Because during the writing, when justifying a certain type of proposal, I realized that after all we had not gone as far [in the project] as we would have wanted. “But it happens to me a lot too,” he replied. It’s incredible! Because, really, we also draw through writing; we are there thinking very intensively about a certain situation and we solved through writing things that were not yet solved in drawing!

Of course, reading theorists helps me a lot to get my ideas in order; sometimes it helps me to understand certain situations that I foresaw, but that I couldn’t explain so well, or that I didn’t understand yet why I felt them that way, or often alert me to situations in which I never had thought. Although this is always the weakest point. When they alert us to things we never thought about, we never fully understand them. It is easier when they provide us with an explanation for things we have already reflected on, experiences we have been through. There we are richer to understand, we are more within the problem, we can immediately criticize, say “it is not quite like that”, “it is more than that yet”, or “this is it, because it happened to me too”. I think that it will be this kind of theoretical reflection that can help us a lot to exercise our drawing skills.

 

JCL – It is always tempting to ask a question about the future of architecture, but more than that – now that the current state is more or less catastrophic at a global level and a crisis at a national level – I would risk asking what paths do you think you can take…

I feel like giving a relatively easy answer, like the architect [Eduardo] Souto de Moura, when he was interviewed about the Pritzker prize. He repeated several times that the new generation has to emigrate, that there is no work for anyone here. Apparently, it looks like this, that for a few years there will be no work for anyone. Not because things are lacking to build, but because there is no money to do them. Fortunately, the housing problem has been solved for some years now; the most urgent is done, there is no money for other types of bets.

Since there is no money in the State for large orders – and imagining that there will be a huge downturn in the economy in general – there will also be no money in the private sector; as such, most young architects will have to emigrate. Some were already doing it: many of our students here at Autónoma had already gone to work in Brazil, in Switzerland, others stayed in Spain, others went only on Internship and ended up staying two or three more years. There are those who came back, to see if they could get work around here, and who then returned again. This bet is already an interesting experience for those who like to do architecture. There is no problem with emigrating; I think it is fun for a person, at these ages, with no responsibilities whatsoever, to go to a foreign city and start there to start in Architecture; then you see, if you want to stay, if you want to set up camp, if you want to go back to Portugal. However, and despite knowing some “success stories”, I do not think it can be a generalizable solution.

Apart from this answer, which is more or less “easy”, I can’t answer any more, I don’t have great solutions to this problem. Perhaps even on the hypothesis of doing other types of work that are not so orthodox, in a more or less conventional perspective of the profession: I would welcome the area of ​​“Measurements and Budgets” or that of “Technical Responsible for the Work” little by little taken by young architects, as it has been, for a few years now, that of the old “Designers-designers”. Also Photography or Architecture Editions, on paper or digital, or Scenography, in theater or television, or Art Direction in cinema – but these fields, despite everything, have been occupied by architects.

Of course, for established studios, emigrating does not make sense; I cannot emigrate with my structure! I can try to bring work from the outside in. It’s a bit different: the younger ones are going to sell their workforce to foreign studios and the studios in Portugal are going to try to capture jobs abroad. But it is not easy either, I have been doing some demarches in that sense, I am in talks in Macau, in Mozambique, in Bahrain, to see what can be done. In addition to liking Architecture very much and not wanting to stop doing it, even in these adverse conditions, we have responsibilities towards the people who are with us, who like to be with us, and for whom we have to guarantee work. But this is a personal answer, I don’t see any great solutions, I don’t know how to get out of this; let’s see what happens.

 

 

FR – And isn’t urban rehabilitation a possibility?

Yes, but money is also needed. I mean: urban rehabilitation, even if promoted by the State, by the Chambers, is much more expensive than new construction. It is done in conditions, most of the time, very adverse, in the middle of the historic city, with immense difficulties of the shipyard, immense difficulties of work. It will only be possible with economic stimuli, with positive discrimination, with much lower rates of recovery. Without such things, and in the midst of an economic crisis, even less chance will exist and rehabilitation by the private sector will be condemned to a niche in the luxury market. This universe is also very limited; as much as it is said that the rich should pay for the crisis, there are not so many rich people like that, they all have homes, and there will not be many children to marry. The promoters are going to spend a lot of money and the houses go to the market very expensive. Even if they sell them, another perversity emerges: the gentrification of historic centers, that is, an expressive social change that will remove from these centers the popular characteristics that they still have, the joy they still have.

When in the Escadinhas da Bica the popular people who live there – who have parties in Santo António, who decorate it with paper bags, who eat sardines outside, who drink a few glasses and shout at each other – stop living when they pass everything to be sick of children born to dads who bought them a house, recovered, with many bathrooms and rooms, that becomes a sadness, a bore, a horrible place! There are no grocery stores anymore, there are no taverns and it becomes a ghostly street with closed shutters, where you go out in the morning and go in the afternoon and you don’t see anyone. I hate the idea of ​​gentrification in the city, due to this very costly recovery that we are having. If there were, indeed, mechanisms to make this recovery faster, cheaper, stimulating for contractors, or for promoters, so that popular prices could be practiced … the social mix would continue to be done, with some liveliness.