Francisco Pereira da Costa: Para além do CODA

Abstract

Part of a group of authors born, roughly speaking, in the 1920s, Francisco Pereira da Costa, from Barcelos, is generally known for the project through which he submits, in 1953, to CODA (Contest for Obtaining the Architect's Diploma), in the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes do Porto - a housing and commercial block built in D. Afonso V square, in Porto. His personal and professional paths, however, ended up being covered by a certain anonymity that, not allowing to track written works dedicated entirely to his work, is combined with the limited information available on the same subject, aggravated by the inexistence of a personal archive. These constraints were, however, the main motivation for making a contribution that has not yet existed. Despite Pereira da Costa's almost automatic association with the building in D. Afonso V square, his work, whose knowledge we intend to expand with this thesis, does not deserve to be summarized in a single example. This feeling was born from a visit to another collective housing building, designed by him, located on Rua de Guerra Junqueiro, also in Porto. This last work, from the beginning of the 1960s, in addition to marking the return of Pereira da Costa to Porto after a rich period of professional practice in Luanda, to where he had left at the beginning of his career, marks a new disciplinary phase of the author which, characterized by an undeniable maturity, has continuity in the projects that follow.