ESBAP|FAUP. O Ensino da Arquitetura na Escola do Porto. Construção de um Projeto Pedagógico entre 1969 e 1984.

Abstract

Since the creation of Lisbon and Oporto Academies of Fine Arts in 1836, one assisted an evolution and successive transformation of the teaching of architecture in Portugal. To each moment of reorganization, it corresponded a particular cultural time and a certain understanding on the exercise and teaching of architecture. The progressive implementation of Beaux-Arts matrix, which was developed along the XIX century and the first half of the XX century, was interrupted to give place for a new way built accordingly to a decided and committed strategy of approach to a teaching that one wished to be modern. The 1st National Congress of Architecture, held in 1948, marked a decisive moment of affirmation of a new generation, socially and ideologically committed to the Modern; of consolidation of a new consciousness on the exercise and teaching of the profession; and of irreversible debate, revision and change. The dichotomy between the artist architect and the technical architect and the dignifying of the profession by giving university character to the teaching in architecture, marked the debate around the teaching reform. In Oporto, Carlos Ramos was the mentor, booster and main protagonist of the school rebuilding process in accordance with the modern ideas, which came to be established and implemented already late, with the publication of the 1957 Reform. The extent of the operated transformation does not content itself with the introduction of changes at the level of the curriculum, it also involved didactic and pedagogic practices, including the concept of school, through a resizing of its functions. One of Carlos Ramos main contribution, revealed in various positions and actions that he assumed and developed, especially over the 50's and 60's, came to be the construction of an identity, which was designated School of Porto, Carlos Ramos's one to which a collective joined. At the beginning of the 60's, a diversified set of circumstances compromised the new way pursued by the School. The observed failure of the 1957 Reform gave rise to a process of challenging the modern curriculum, which won size, density and new fronts in the confrontation with the architecture debate that was developed at the national and international scale. From the debate resulted the confirmation of the existence of a mismatch between the problems, challenges and demands put by a new and complex society undergoing on a rapid transformation process and the moulds of profession exercise and architecture teaching. When the 60's ended, social and political architectural dimension and the democratization of teaching and of its management structures occupied a central position in the disciplinary debate. In spite of the growing disquiet that was installed and gained thickness along the 60's - in the heart of the class of the architects and in the student community - and of the troubled political and social scene that one lived at international and national scale, the beginning of the process of deep restructuring, operated along the 70's, was triggered by the eminent dissolution of ESBAP Architecture Course, in the academic year of 1969|70. Such a circumstance imposed, as the only way out and as a survival condition, the search of a new way through a permanent selfcontrolled experimentation. At the successive moments that mediate the school crisis, in the academic year of 1969|70, and the stabilization of the course, already in the context of its integration into the University in 1984, we developed this thesis trying to identify the circumstances and events that guided the search for a new way and the experimentation followed; to identify and to characterize the direction and teaching principles followed underlying the different structures and study plans that were defined; as well as to identify those contributions that participated in the construction of a new identity. From our point of view, without a model and explicit references, that search for a path and experimentation were guided by a permanent process of critic appropriation of different references and experiences, more or less clear and more or less straight that informed a long, tumultuous and difficult process of restructuring of the course, which gave rise to a new pedagogical project. Corresponded to that process, moments of revision of the way of seeing, thinking, doing and teaching architecture, which came to be the founders of a new School of Porto, a collective one that was led by Fernando Távora.