Entre a cidade, o jardim e o mar: Reflexões sobre o processo de projecto de um Aquário Público para a Foz

Abstract

The present dissertation, of theoretical and practical method, intends to encompass a reflection on the process of learning and experimenting the discipline of architecture, through the design of a public aquarium for the place where the Marine Zoology Station Dr. Augusto Nobre is stationed. The proposal is inserted in a space located between the city, the garden and the sea, in a situation that requires an intervention that is capable of integrating the new object into an established territory, as an element capable of rewriting and energising a pre-existent urban context. Therefore, this document seeks to communicate the way how the investigation of the local context and the assemblage of information, memories and previous architectural experiences participate in the practical dimension of the elaboration of an architectural project. The acknowledgement of the procedures that inform the creative process - which include the confrontation with reality, and the analysis of the place and the programme -, represents the main purpose of this study. Thus, the intention of this work is to deconstruct the design process, understanding architecture as a transdisciplinary expression, which is informed and mobilised by a wide variety of forces that result from the confrontation between the objectivity and the subjectivity that characterise the creative process. The development of the work is organised through a sequence of approximation to the design process, starting with the analysis of the place, passing through the understanding of the essence of the programme, and culminating in the application of the knowledge that was previously acquired, in the materialisation of a proposal that results from a profound questioning of the foundations that inform and mobilise its conception.