De memória. Por entre sonhos e devaneios: uma torre em Monsaraz

Abstract

This is an exercise from memory, - a continuous remembering. Our place in the world is defined by a collection of fragments that become cohesive and make us as a whole. Memory is the basis of life, in the sense that it is through memory that we assume the passage of time. Without memory we would be imprisoned in fractions of a second. The awareness of memory as an operative tool in life, but also in architecture, motivates this study about a space-in-between; a tenuous membrane that separates the real world from the imaginary. We are in the presence of an investigation about the ontology of architecture, in what is the encounter between Self and place - and, therefore, the construction of memory. This is a journey about the essence of the Self; about the material we are made of; without a certain destination, but with the conviction that the return will be more certain. After a better understanding of what memory is, and how it actively contributes to the materialization of an architecture that goes beyond the tangible, - that we touch in its material dimension, but that touches us through memory and imagination, beyond what is visible -, we focus on our memory as experience, a memory that is not static and allows us to create narratives about our own architectural apprehension. But, being aware that architecture is concrete and this cosmos is a consequence of the real materiality of the building, we propose an exercise, in a competition context, where the principles of an architecture that wants to be sensitive are fomented, accepting that, in the appropriate words of Sérgio Fernandez, it does not guarantee happiness, but it can be the place of happiness, a way to achieve happiness.