Arquitectura Mediada: difusão através das revistas portuguesas da especialidade

Abstract

The current dissertation aims to study the scope of the Portuguese periodical publications dedicated to the specialized fi eld. This approach intends to analyze the subject of the architectural mediation through communication devices that act as content disseminators, focusing on the symbiosis and stress of this specifi c relationship. The essay is structured in three parts, introduction, development and conclusion. In the fi rst part, the range of the research, its object, purpose and method are presented, providing, as well, a bibliographic record of authors, whose arguments are important to the debate on the subject of mediation and diffusion of architecture. Among these references, Beatriz Colomina, Hélène Lipstadt, Marc Saboya, Kester Rattenbury and Pedro Gadanho's researches will be highlighted. The dissertation is then developed in two moments: a theoretical report of the subject and a study of the architectural publications periodically edited in Portugal. In the fi rst one our purpose is to observe the communicative phenomena by which the architectural content is disseminated, crossing arguments from the communication research with others generated on the fi eld of Architecture. The analysis will focus on the processes of mediated communication, its growth into a mediatized action and the conditions that were responsible for its institutionalization in the social sphere. The subject is then driven to the fi eld of architecture, evaluating the functionality and operation of a device responsible for the spreading of architectural content - the magazines focused on the discipline. Then such arguments will be observed, by restoring the range of the periodical publications produced in the Portuguese context. To achieve that target, a chronological study will be presented, comparing the different conveyance devices of architecture publication from the beginning of the 20th century until the contemporaneous time. Finally the subject will be reevaluated in a conclusion section. Hence, as an outline of that conclusion, we envision the ambiguity of the architectural magazines, operating as media devices, when communicating architecture. Besides providing the cultural spread of the subject, they are also important in representing the architectural event and updating the community knowledge about Architecture. Nevertheless, reporting the architectural real depends on a selective process based on multiple criteria including ideological, deceiving or propagandist. Thus, architectural magazines have a mediating role as well as the responsibility and power to designate contents to be perceptible and recognized by the public. Therefore these media devices are instruments capable of legitimizing the discipline contents, and possibly interfering with the architecture autonomy. The relationship between them and the discipline varies from the symbiosis to the strain. The scope of the Portuguese publications provides the level of this interference and others generated by mediatization. At the same time a relevant mediated heritage with historical value will be reproduced. This restoration aims, indeed, to be one of the main contributions of the present dissertation.