Porta Nova da Alhambra: Das razões profundas do projecto no tempo longo do processo de criação arquitectónica

Abstract

In scope of the International Competition of ideas for the Atrium of Alhambra, organized in between2010 and 2011 by the Council of the Alhambra and the Generalife, Álvaro Siza and Juan DomingoSantos developed a project named New Gate. The project and the creative process correspond tothe study object and to the subject of our PhD final thesis. The choice of the case followed theintuition that a project thought for a place like the Alhambra of Granada, palatine cityabsolutely dense of references and built in a long time of tensions, of transitions and synthesis oftwo different cultures as the occidental and as the islamic, and developed by Architects likeÁlvaro Siza and like Juan Domingo Santos, also them formed by dense memories of life and ofprofessional experiences, would be exhaustive and extremely suggestive. We proposedourselves to develop a PhD final thesis in Architecture about a project and its creative process,without theoretical frameworks that could change the thoughts around it. After the analysis ofthe drawings, of the texts and of the models, we built a puzzle that could tell us about themetamorphosis of the ideas and shapes through the time. We gave life to the process followingits tracks and we learnt to listen the voice of the project. Starting from the time thatcorresponds to the project in itself, we arrived in a time that corresponds to a previousformation based on memories of experiences of the Alhambra, memories that allows us tothink, but never explain neither define, the project. Relating precise information of the longtime of the project, we understand that in the first drawings that define the identity of the NewGate are arriving themes that belong mainly to the places of the Alhambra and that in the laterdrawings that study the proposal in deep are arriving references from other projects of theauthors. And if the project for the New Gate of the Alhambra is a synthesis of previousexperiences in relation with the place and with the programme, it represents also a continuedtheme for the projects done after, being possible to built an idea of continuity. To this empiricalmethod of design, at the same time always different and always equal, we associate a knowledgeaccumulated through a long time.