Um Território em Socalcos. Proposta de uma Casa Experimental na Ilha da Madeira

Abstract

This is the memoir of a personal project. The present thesis was motivated by the will and desire that seeks attitudes and statements of intervention, based on an experimental action on an island framework, the Madeira Island. The growing pace of transformations and mutations that have been witnessed in Madeira Island, led to the vanishing of values of a collective identity, evoking a desire to question the values that are present in tradition, culture and memories of a society, not only in the construction of a place, but also in the pursuit for an intimate relationship we can achieve with places, spaces and landscapes. The interest in these themes increased throughout the academic journey, in a constant back and forth to Mother Earth, as they are the particular and defining qualities of this territory, which must be the object of an effort of preservation, so that it is possible to (re)construe. In this sense, this work seeks to (re)recognize, analyse and (re)interpret some critical points, in order to enhance the possibility of acting, through an experimental project, in a real context: the landscape of Socalco, which bears culture and history, located in Calheta. The place, the elements that define and characterize it, and the search to understand the relationship of the action of Man in the Landscape and in the Territory, through the creation of a space-house, will be the main themes analysed during the development of the reflections exposed in this thesis. These themes arose from the need to put a critical and conscious stance towards the problems, opportunities and constraints that a project can raise in such a peculiar context. In this manner, the project appears not only as a consequence of reflections and problems considered throughout the development of this work, but also as the result of a set of considerations and possibilities in the context that involves a range of characteristics and factors that are able to characterize this territory. The aim is to build a personal posture, a way of looking at the territory of Madeira Island, invoking an architecture that seeks to free itself from formal conditions in order to allow its adaptation.