JOSÉ ADRIÃO

Tell us how was your academic career as a student, how was the architecture course, which teachers or outstanding exercises you had, the experiences that were constructive for the course as an architect.  

I joined the university in 1984, for the course at the Technical University of Lisbon. I remember perfectly the first day I entered the Escola de Belas Artes, left the metro at Rossio and went up Rua Garrett. Studying in Chiado was a privilege.

During the first three years at the university in Lisbon, learning was done mainly with colleagues. The atmosphere at the school was very intense. The city was going through some incredible moments, the 80’s. ESBAL was a place full of energy, it had, in addition to architecture, painting, sculpture and design courses. There were a lot of musicians, people who made fashion and architecture students were immersed in this environment full of ideas. The “Bairro Alto” ​​was starting.

We were investigating, discovering, strolling. Our classes extended to the street, the city and the trips we made around Lisbon. Then we tried to see everything there was to see: cinema, exhibitions, concerts. We live in the city with many gains, participating actively – and yet without the awareness that we were doing it – in one of the most stimulating moments that Lisbon has lived in these last decades.

Then I asked for a transfer to Porto. At the time, there were only two schools, Lisbon and Porto. I felt that the people who came from Porto were better prepared. The course was actually much more demanding. Teachers marked and transformed students’ lives. There were always conversations about “those in Porto and those in Lisbon”. At the time, I thought, “I’m not going to have this conversation my whole life!” and I moved to Porto. I asked for a transfer from the third to the fourth year.

 

Was architecture a first choice, or was it a progressive discovery?

I wasn’t sure from the beginning that I wanted to be an architect. It was not a revelation in my life. It was a late thing, around the age of twenty. I think what made me choose architecture were the discoveries I started to make at that time. However, I also wanted to learn cinema. I was born and, until I went to Porto, I always lived in Alvalade, at the intersection of Avenida de Roma and Avenida Estados Unidos da América, in the buildings of José Segurado and Filipe Figueiredo (01). Alvalade, at the time, was a very active area, there were music groups and huge artists. The house where I lived was above the café “Vá-Vá” (02) and that’s why I was always surrounded by that energy.

 

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How was Porto?

When I went to Porto I had several goals: the first was the Porto school. But I also wanted to go live alone and the only chance to achieve that was to move to another city. Then I wanted to be a student at Souto Moura. So I went to speak to Souto Moura and said: “- I would like to be your student.” He said yes. It was remarkable to have him as a teacher. He is an intelligent and very available person. I remember the classes perfectly. Souto Moura went through the drawers in sequence to talk to us individually about the work, always with a thick pencil. He crossed over the drawings and made very good reviews. Usually there were students who accompanied him in conversations at almost every table, I was one of them. I really enjoyed it. I remember that I always tried to develop the bases of the projects that the students presented and saw different interests in almost everyone. It activated the possibilities of each one. He often told us: “- To develop this project, you have to go see this and that, that architect, or that Alvar AAlto project”. Then, he changed the drawing board, said: “- For this project you have to go see Mies van derRohe…”. He presented very different works and architects as references, which made things interesting and complex. The different directions pleased me a lot. He was truly an extraordinary teacher. It was fundamental in my training and just for that reason, having moved to Porto, it was worth it.

 

And what relationship did you have with the city?

I arrived in Porto in 1987, it was another very important phase in my life. First, I started living alone; then, it was the discovery of a city I didn’t know and an extraordinary school, with a very intense environment. My fourth year classmates had been together for three years now, they had grown up and learned together, and I tried to keep up with them. I was lucky to go for a year and have classmates who were really making the most of school time. In my fourth year there was a great group among which Guilherme PárisCouto, Nuno Grande, João Pedro Serôdio and Isabel Furtado dos SeródioFurtado & Associados, Francisco Vieira Campos and Cristina Guedes of “Menos é Mais”, Luís Tavares Pereira and Guiomar Rosa, from [A] Still Architecture, Pedro Mendes, Pedro Cortesão, Paulo Seco and others also very good. On the other hand, I met students who had just entered their first year and who were also discovering the city, like Rogério Gonçalves with whom I later made a magazine called DA -Documentos de Arquitectura (03) and Pedro Reis. An excellent year, full of people who remain committed and committed today as architects, teachers, critics and citizens.

At the beginning of the year, we decided, at the initiative of Paulo Seco, to rent a work space on Rua dos Almadas. There were five of us, those who shared the space we called Almadas: Luís Pereira, Paulo Seco, Pedro Cortesão, Vasco Mendia and me. In another room there was a sculpture studio. We made that place our home. We were always there to work from the time we left school until dawn. When I went to Porto, I went to live for a pension, the Mondariz pension. It was a pension of some Galicians, in Batalha, where I only went to sleep. Our life was basically: school, Almadas and the necessary outlets, with all the energy of studying and being in a new city.

Everyone said: “- You are going to Porto in the fourth year, which is the most difficult year, it will be impossible” or “- You come from Lisbon where the school is terrible.” I was a little scared. At that time, I was the first student to request a transfer from Lisbon to Porto in the middle of the course. It was often the opposite, from Porto to Lisbon. But it went very well, I managed to get a reasonable grade. Then I went on a trip.

In the summer, I used to hike in Europe. That year my trip ended up being longer. I went to Switzerland, got a job in a carpentry shop, then in an architecture studio and stayed for a few months. I decided not to return to Porto and continue a year of traveling and gaining experience. I don’t think courses need to be done in a burst. Each student has his own time. At the time I thought I didn’t have the maturity to go back and go to the fifth year, even though the fourth year went well for me. I then worked in a studio in Montreux, Switzerland. I had all of central Europe within a few hours’ drive: Italy, Belgium, France, Amsterdam, Berlin – I saw a lot of architecture. Almost every weekend I used to travel. Then I decided to go to London where I met Teresa Novais and Jorge Carvalho, from the aNC, who were already doing their sixth year of internship at the Porto school. I sent resumes and got a job. I stayed there a year.

 

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When you returned to Porto, you lost the class you had in the fourth year, which had been very good…

I lost the excellent class I had, but I knew I was going to pick up students I already knew and liked. Among them Pedro Pacheco. When I came back I had a new life experience, and I did my fifth year with Carlos Prata. That year, very good things happened: there was the cycle of conferences “Discourses on Architecture” (04), many architects who were starting to consolidate their experiences at that time – Herzog and de Meuron, Peter Zumthor, David Chipperfield.

It was also Josep Llinás, from Barcelona, ​​who fascinated me. At the end of the conference, I went to talk to him and said that I would like to work with him. I was already predicting that my sixth year would be a practical studio experience. I wanted to go to Barcelona, ​​which I already knew from my travels in Europe, and he said yes. When the fifth year was over, Pedro Pacheco and I then went to work for Barcelona with JosepLlinás. We asked Souto Moura to be our internship advisor and he accepted. Having an internship advisor like Souto Moura was once again a privilege. Totally available, with some criticism and really good and attentive guidance.

I spent a year in Barcelona working, living, discovering another city. Barcelona was still not what it is now. Before the 1992 Olympic Games, Barcelona was a much tougher city, with wild ramblas that had a typical port environment, sailors and prostitutes. The Barcelona we know today has nothing to do with Barcelona at that time. It was not even a desired city. People knew Madrid reasonably, but Barcelona did not.

We lived in Borne, at the foot of Santa Maria do Mar, at that time an ill-famed neighborhood that today has become an expensive and touristic neighborhood.

My close relationship with Barcelona has continued over the years. In 1996 I started to do a Master’s degree organized simultaneously by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and by the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) which was coordinated by Manuel de Solà-Morales. This master’s degree, for a number of reasons, has stopped. For this reason, I signed up for the Metropolis Masters, coordinated by Ignasi de Solà-Morales. The teachers were very good, there were great classes and conferences. Ignasi was a unique figure and a brilliant intellectual. He spoke without fear about very controversial and delicate subjects, both in architecture and politics, such as the Basque and Catalan issues. He was brave and had no problem being politically incorrect. This is often lost in academia and institutions, with obvious losses for the plurality of research. The curricular part of the master’s degree was given at CCCB, so I continued in the middle of the city. This made me watch the whole evolution of Barcelona as we know it today and realize that what happened in Barcelona for two decades, from 1992 until now, was the result of planning and hard work, with great anticipation and with many architects involved.

 

At the time you took the course, Europe was the destination par excellence for almost all young Portuguese people. Nowadays we are witnessing another type of travel, outside this continent. There are other kinds of interests…

The trip at that time was a very important thing. My generation, in the eighties, went through an important phase of discovery. After April 25th things started to change very quickly. We read books like Jack Kerouac, “On the road”, and we saw films like Amos Poe’s “Subway Riders” and Jim Jarmush’s “Stranger than Paradise”. There was an appeal to the trip. In Europe, outside the cities there was a crowd of kids hitchhiking. I remember once on a trip out of Paris, we were almost a hundred. There was a population that actually traveled and that did so naturally and with pleasure, and that greatly appreciated this freedom. When we went on a trip we had no fixed destination. We were going to travel for the sake of traveling, with little money, and the longer we stayed, the better. One was stopping to earn some money and continue the trip, but the main purpose was to travel. Now you travel in a different way. At the time it was unthinkable to take a plane, because it was very expensive. You went by train. But often, to save money on the inter-rail, and because it was more fun, you hitchhiked.

In Lisbon, when I was fifteen or sixteen, we all hitchhiked to the beach. People went to Praça de Espanha and reached out: they would stop a car and take us to the beach. Not now, now the kids go when they have a car. There is the problem of insecurity – which is sometimes more fictional than real. I mean, we were all then faced with situations of real danger, but we knew how to face and resolve those situations.

 

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The trip is a direct complement to essential training. Architects have a need to go and see things. When Souto Moura said “Go and see this project”, you really wanted to go and see it, right?

Sure! We were going to see Adolf Loos, in the most peripheral district of Prague, or J.P.Oud in the suburbs of Amsterdam. We managed to get there: we had gone, we had seen. This experience, for us, was very important. I think it is essential to see where things are, to understand their relationship with the surroundings, to perceive the smell, the texture. Later, Ricardo Carvalho and I (Ricardo more than me) started to organize trips with a group of students, professors, architects and friends. There were twenty or thirty of us, and we made memorable trips. We did one that, for me, was decisive. We went to Brasília, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre, in twelve days. We had our days fully programmed – of course, these trips are completely different from other trips – these trips have a very specific objective, which is to see architecture, and there are really things that if they are not planned, they cannot be done.

There was a day when we saw Marquise, by Oscar Niemeyer, SESC Pompeia, by Lina Bo Bardi, FAUUSP, by Vilanova Artigas and MUB by Paulo Mendes da Rocha. It was decisive. He knew the works of Lina Bo Bardi from publications, but her works (like almost all) cannot be understood if they are not experienced. Things like that, never seen, never felt. He sensed that there was that way of making architecture, but he had never seen it built. Vilanova Artigas speaks of the “spatialization of democracy and freedom, where all activities are lawful”. You really arrive at FAUUSP, and you realize that that building has a very clear strategy and program in the construction of architecture. You enter the campus campus and then you arrive at a building that is the school of architecture. This building has no doors at the entrance. It literally has no doors. There is a giant atrium, lit with natural light that gives access to huge ramps that lead to the classrooms. There was not a single door on this path. They are spaces that establish a total relationship between them. It is very powerful.

There is one thing that fascinates me about the Brazilian architecture of the fifties, sixties and seventies which is the programmatic construction of freedom and democracy. The buildings are very generous, very easy to use, very simple. The Niemeyer Marquee is exactly that: a large visor that protects from the sun and rain and where a lot of things can be done. We can be under the Marquise on a sunny day, and suddenly it starts to rain, as it often happens in Brazil, and people stop and stay there looking at the rain… Then, the visor is a giant cover with some gargoyles that collects rainwater. When it stops raining, the gargoyles continue to pour the water that the cover has accumulated. People start skating and cycling and strolling from side to side and water continues to flow out of the roof through the gargoyles, to specific points in the park and garden. When architecture succeeds through very simple, very clear things, with this poetic intensity it is really exciting.

 

In the classes you teach here at UAL you also provide students with the travel experience.

Juan Herreros once explained a project he did with students at the Madrid school. He planned to meet them somewhere in Morocco. The program was to create a hostel that was supposed to house a traveler going from Europe towards the south of the African continent, and an African coming from the south to emigrate to the north. These two people were going to meet in a specific place, and – at that time – they would have exactly the same needs: to eat, rest, freshen up, bathe, etc. This hostel should have the function of being able to comfortably receive these two people. An excellent exercise isn’t it? We, in the impossibility of going to Morocco, or further afield, started with an exercise on the Island of Faro and then repeated in Sagres, Arrifana and Porto Covo. The main idea is to get students out of their comfort zone, which is the city where they live, and to go to places that are, for the most part, unknown. So they know each other. They are there for a weekend, sleeping, strolling, on the beach. Then, when they return, they have to make a presentation of the site in a very intuitive way. Exercise has to do with this displacement, being in a strange place, in a place that is not part of the routine. In a next phase we start with the analysis and then the understanding of the territory begins to reveal itself.

 

At this moment, the third year became a remarkable year, and you do a lot to mark this transition from the third to the fourth year, reinforcing the importance of the third year…

The third year with Ricardo Carvalho, and now also with Rui Mendes, is the end of a cycle and therefore there has to be a kind of synthesis. In this sense, we propose specific exercises that evolve from a territorial scale to a more intimate scale of living. Sites such as Arrifana, Sagres, Porto Covo, Faro Island, are very asymmetrical. There are extremely intense summer periods, and winter periods, very little happens except to wait for the next high season. They are wonderful places, with extraordinary landscapes, but full of problems, with wrong planning, with poorly made buildings. For example, in Faro Island and Arrifana, illegal houses, built in a precarious way, are much more in line with the place than legal houses, with concrete foundations, brick walls, double walls, swimming pools, these all things. But, many times, these illegal buildings, even though they are fragile, call into question the territory where they were built. In Faro Island they had to be demolished, because the territory is in serious erosion and something has to be done.

In the beginning, there is no defined project program. We go to the sites to find out what topics and issues are relevant to address. There is a very intuitive first phase, which is learning to look at things. We arrive at the site, for example Arrifana, we walk, and we are confronted with a sparse, rarefied, rough, windy landscape. Then, when we started to study flora, fauna, geology we realized that there are dozens of protected species, unique in the world, and we suddenly have immense data for the project that we need to select and rank. And it is not only the various layers of vegetation, fauna and geology, but also those of an ancient human occupation. There are paths where we can imagine that three thousand years ago people passed through there towards the south, or from the south towards the north.

When all these layers start to appear, things start to be very interesting. We think that the experience that students should have in this third year is learning how to build a project based on a very clear strategy that can identify problems and that does not create other problems. When we start to work there is no program and, little by little, with the evolution of the work we detect the problems or any programs that are missing in those places. It can be a social center, it can be a small hostel, it can be a surf camp. It is usually based on the analysis made by the students that we decide what to do.

In the third year we want students to learn how to build the project from a large scale to detail, always following a reasoning that must be in line, from start to finish. When the strategies defined are based on the territory and the questions are real, the projects tend to have a simplicity and a naturalness that is close to the evident and that, in this phase, can be interesting. All projects must contain clear and precise reasoning.

We want students to be able to explain their options well. Therefore, from the beginning, the presentation of works is always done in sharing with teachers and with the class. Students reach the end of semesters and, before the final jury, know how to coherently explain a reasoning. Say exactly the right phrases at the right time, according to an elaborate text that summarizes the project, and this is very rewarding.

In my training, over the six years of study in Lisbon and Porto, I believe that I presented a project twice before an audience. It was sometime in the second year in Lisbon, and in the presentation of the final thesis before the jury in Porto. I find it difficult for a student, who will have a profession to constantly explain his ideas and reasoning to others, to be prepared in this way. I think students now leave university better prepared than I did.

 

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Many of our students are working in Angola, or in South America, leaving for a very different context from the European one, which you were talking about initially. Does this type of exercise also prepare you to work in these countries?

The preparation in Portuguese schools, in general, is good. With the course of UAL they acquire instruments and work tools that, in comparison with many universities that I have already visited, are of an excellent level. They acquire something that is fundamental: knowing how to think, thinking, within a disciplinary context. They can create reasoning and that reasoning can be applied to small scales or to larger scales. I think that a student, from the moment he begins to know how to link and develop, through a project, a coherent work strategy, creates a method that he can apply in different situations. It is necessary to identify the problems, the needs of a specific place or place, it is necessary to resolve the issues in a fair and correct way and it is necessary to simplify. The tools and instruments they acquire at the university are always useful, whether to work in Angola, or to work at a nature conservation institute, or to work in planning, or to work in urban planning, or simply as citizens.

Students discover architecture and the pleasure of architecture at different times: some in the first year, others in the second, others in the third. We happen to have students who for some reason are unmotivated, or who have not yet realized the meaning of things. Sometimes they discover with us that what they are doing at the university can make sense and that they can get immense pleasure from it. There are students who repeat years, who fail, and then they are brilliant students. What is needed is to be calm and know that, at the university, you need to be completely attentive. I once read somewhere “Tell me what teachers you had, I will tell you who you are”. This sentence makes sense to me. The opposite is to spend five fundamental years and eventually be a mediocre professional.

 

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Somehow you emphasize the importance of complementary knowledge to architecture, of the other things that a person is discovering, whether in academic terms, travel, music and friends…

Architecture can be done in so many ways, and there is so good architecture and so different! There is one thing that I find very interesting: when things are genuine. When there are architects who have a genuine discourse on things, it is noticeable. When Ricardo Carvalho and I were directors of Jornal dos Arquitectos, between 2006 and 2009, we did interviews with different architects – Álvaro Siza, Aires Mateus, Souto Moura, Gonçalo Byrne, Jean Philippe Vassal, Carrilho da Graça, Juan Herreros, Manuel Graça Dias , Manuel Salgado, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, the Promontório and Zumthor. Each of them exposed their way of relating to the world. The architecture they produce conveys this. I believe that the different combinations between our way of doing, the way we feel and position ourselves in the world as citizens and professionals, can result in incredible things. But things only become interesting and can only be really useful to others when they are genuine. Even containing contradictions and not being linear. Therefore, what we say to our students is: “Understand what your interests are, understand how you want to be in the world and then present us with a vision of how this can be transported to architecture”.

I like diversity, heterogeneity. I like to see people thinking differently, I like being confronted with the unknown. In fact, the journey is just that, confronting the unknown.

In relation to students, the job prospects they may have in the future, I believe that our profession is changing, the world is changing. Gianni Vattimo, who is a philosopher, says: “Life is beautiful because it changes.” We do not know when it will move, we do not know where, but we know it will change; and architects will have to find new ways to do it. But this is nothing new. We already knew that. Since the beginning of history, things are always changing.

When my generation left school, contrary to what was common, we did something that was interesting and almost generational. Given the complexity of the profession, in view of our inexperience, we decided to work in pairs. Pedro Pacheco and I formed a team, Inês Lobo started working with Pedro Domingos, Ricardo Bak Gordon with Carlos Vilela, Cristina Veríssimo and Diogo Burnay, Pedro Ravara and Nuno Vidigal, in Lisbon. Later also Aires Mateus, ARX and Ricardo Carvalho with Joana Vilhena. Also, in Porto, Cristina Guedes and Francisco Vieira de Campos, Luís Tavares Pereira and Guiomar Rosa, João Pedro Serôdio and Isabel Furtado, joined in pairs. It was our way of responding to the things that were happening. There were also other forms, for example the Promontório, which created a larger body. I think what will happen is that the generations after us will find new ways of relating to work and creating job opportunities. Will you join even more, will you join less, will you join differently? We got together in pairs of architects, but why don’t groups of architects and engineers, or architects and real estate agents, or architects and builders form? Why are things watertight? The next generations will surely find an answer to what is happening right now. Like? It is not known. We did it our way, they will have to do it the way they find it.

 

Do the projects you are doing reflect this change?

Everything is more flexible, much faster, but at our time it was also very fast. Our profession has changed a lot in twenty years. More and more architects will have to be from the beginning of the process. As an example, I give a job, which was the restoration of a building in Baixa Pombalina, the “Fanqueiros Project” (05). The studio worked with the client from the beginning. The client wanted to invest in Lisbon, he wanted to buy an old building, because he really likes Lisbon and the architecture of the city center. The studio made contact with real estate agencies to find buildings to retrieve that would serve the client’s interests. We set up the entire tender process with the construction companies, with the inspection companies, we looked for possible support from state entities, we went looking for money available in European funds. Architects increasingly have to be part of the whole process. They can no longer just be doing projects in the studio, they have to be active agents in a much wider way.

 

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You said earlier that you liked diversity. I would like to know if this is reflected in the studio, in the collaborators, in your work process…

In the studio we are a small group, five, and things go on in a very normal way. The method and way of working vary slightly according to the people who enter the studio and the specificity of each job. In the studio, each project has a responsible collaborator who is the project leader. I assume the role of general coordinator. Together we make decisions.

We have certain concerns, which are also reflected in the way I teach, which is trying to understand as deeply as possible the place where we are working, criticizing the program and then building it in the most rigorous and clear way we can.

I think that architecture starts in the program and that all options must be considered. We usually have the need to question the programs they give us to develop because we are often faced with options that we think are not the right ones. Making architecture, designing, building, is a very long, laborious and expensive process. There is not much scope for failure. You need to draw what is necessary and think about whether it is necessary five years from now. Because, as we have already seen, things change quickly. Then it’s team work. And sometimes we are lucky that the whole team is good, including the customer and the builder. Doing architecture is really a team effort.

 

What kind of work are you doing right now?

This year we worked mainly on rehabilitation. Lisbon has a very interesting urban fabric and there are many things that were to be demolished but that, fortunately, with this crisis, will remain. We are also working at Mouraria and Junqueira.

There are areas in Lisbon that have buildings or urban complexes with immense value both in terms of typology and construction. There was a time when I had a studio on Rua da Padaria, in Baixa Pombalina. There I was confronted for a while with containers at the door of buildings full of frames, doors and doors that were two hundred years old, as if they were worthless.

At this moment, we realize that those constructive elements can be preserved, that they are eventually imperfect, but that they still have value for that.

Another important issue is that rehabilitation allows us to work with types that are not conventional. In recent decades, apartment buildings have been built in Portugal that have repeated the typology of T’s until exhaustion. For example, the typologies of T – which we think is universal but which is typically Portuguese – invariably have an area of ​​the house with the bedrooms and an area with the social area. When we enter unknown houses with this type, we know exactly where the bathroom, kitchen, etc. are, because they are always in the same place. In Baixa Pombalina the houses, more than bedrooms and living rooms, have spaces, which can be transformed into whatever is necessary, during a specific period of time.

We have also rehabilitated a popular apartment in Alcântara where the two bedrooms are located on opposite sides of the house. In the middle is the social zone. In this way the apartment can be shared by friends while maintaining privacy. The typologies that we have found in the buildings that we are recovering suggest another type of housing, more flexible and perhaps more appropriate to the current moment. As they are not subject to the regulations, often absurd, to which new constructions are subject, we can explore other combinations that are not in accordance with the standard, but which nevertheless reveal great possibilities.

Atypical, less conventional, unexpected and sometimes imperfect spaces are created and that interests me a lot in architecture.

There is a type of architecture that summons and incorporates this imperfection. I am interested in things that emanate and that embody the real, the imperfect, and that are somehow incomplete and provisional. That’s what makes us move.

In recent years, the studios that most stimulate me are the ones that have this type of strategy before the project. Herzog & de Meuron since university that interested me a lot. Casa de Pedra is an example of this. They manage to turn simple, mundane things into extraordinary things, and design strategies always vary widely from program to program. For example, speaking of Tate Modern, or the Rehab Center, these are two exceptional buildings that have been developed based on a re-alignment of the program. At the time, Tate revolutionized both the rehabilitation of an industrial building and the notion of a museum. The Rehab was one of the most moving buildings I have ever seen. It is a post-traumatic unit for accident victims. The building exudes enormous comfort and delicacy. Wood, glass, white curtains, light and water. These two works are done almost simultaneously and the strategies – and consequently the materials from which they are built – change, to respond correctly to the program. These buildings are even made for people. They only acquire meaning, or are only really architecture, with people. There are many works of architecture that do not require people. They are so complete and so perfect that they become a closed system. Whether or not someone is inside the buildings is, in these cases, totally indifferent. The person using the building is simply referred to as a passive spectator. I like architectural works that complement each other with people, that motivate people to participate in the building and complete it. That’s how I like to do architecture.

 

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So architecture is not after all to make the world perfect…

I do not think so. I prefer normal things. There is a naturalness that the beautiful and the perfect cannot contain.

 

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01 In 1952, Filipe Figueiredo and José Segurado designed the intersection of the two most important avenues in the Alvalade neighborhood with 4 large blocks of 13 floors arranged perpendicularly, contrary to the square provided for in the plan. The functional program also pointed to a typical “housing unit” solution: interior galleries, minimal dwellings, duplexes, usable terraces. The seventh floor, located at the central level of the building, is formally treated as a separating vane that marked the commercial, tertiary and service floors. The execution would, however, transform it into a traditional housing program, canceling the central service floor and sending trade to the ground floor. The vibrant formal expression developed with rigorous professionalism, however, would be maintained by creasing the separating vane of the two volumes, the vibrant color of magenta, the profuse variety of materials and textures, the sculptural design of the balconies as protruding boxes on the facade. Ana Tostões in: Conjunto Vá-Vá, La Vivienda Moderna ”, 1925-1965. Iberian DOCOMOMO registration.

 

02 Café Vá-Vá. Inaugurated in 1958, with the signature of architect and designer Eduardo Anahory. With an esplanade overlooking the new avenues of Lisbon (intersection between the avenues of Rome and the USA), it had the usual presence of well-known people with the capacity for public intervention in the decades preceding April 25, 1974. There was the group from cinema, from the so-called new cinema, António Pedro Vasconcelos, Fernando Lopes, Paulo Rocha, who lived in the Vá-Vá building [and who made the café a setting for one of the emblematic films in the history of Portuguese cinema, Verdes Anos] Lauro António. There was the group of musicians, Fernando Tordo, Paulo de Carvalho, Carlos Mendes, many journalists, Luís Villas-Boas (from jazz), painters. To go to Vá-Vá was to oppose the regime, if only for the simple fact that there was talk more or less openly about things that could not be whispered even elsewhere.

Twenty years later, with the country already at liberty, a new generation of musicians who wanted to sing Portuguese rock joined them. Zé Pedro, guitarist for Xutos & Pontapés, assumes that his “phase of dragging life on the esplanades” was spent in the cafe at the intersection of Avenida de Roma and Avenida dos EUA. Zé Pedro remembers that the Sétima Legião rehearsed nearby (“we even heard the rehearsals of the esplanade”), the elements of the Heroes of the Sea were also present. Vá-Vá was part of what Zé Pedro classifies as “the punk route”: it was there that the guys got together and then went to the bars, “the big crazy nights were always there”. During the day, it was a guaranteed meeting point with the music crowd. Luis Francisco In: Público P2 “What makes this coffee so special” 07/25/2007.

 

03 DA – Architecture Documents- Publication with the direction of José Adrião and Rogério Gonçalves. Francisco Vassalo and Pedro Pacheco were part of the editorial team. Four issues have been published since the summer of 1999. The first issue was a photocopied edition. Interviews were published with different architects such as: José Gigante, Josep Llinàs, Josep Quetglas, Manuel Gallego and Vitor Figueiredo. A.E.D.A., Association of Architectural Document Studies.

 

04 Speeches on Architecture – It was a cycle of conferences that brought together, in 1990, in the auditorium of the School of Fine Arts in Porto, a remarkable group of architects. The Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto thus marked the entrance in the last decade of the century with an initiative of great scope and ambition. Some names, then in an early stage of their career, such as Jacques Herzog and Peter Zumthor, would later be recognized with the Pritzker Prize. James Stirling, a central figure in post-war architecture, would give one of his last lectures here.

The Discourses on Architecture cycle was organized in 1990 by Carlos Machado, Eduardo Souto de Moura, João Pedro Serôdio, José Bernardo Távora, José Paulo dos Santos, Manuel Mendes. Jorge Figueira in Speeches (Re) visited – Video Cycle. U.Porto, Faculty of Architecture of the Ubiversity of Porto

 

05 Fanqueiros Project – 2011 project by José Adrião Arquitectos in the Baixa Pombalina of Lisbon. The Project received the Vasco Vilalva Award for the recovery and enhancement of its heritage in 2011 and the FAD Interiorismo / Opinion Award 2012