Pavilhão Multiusos de Gondomar e as Dinamicas Sizianas

Abstract

"I believe it's possible to identify the references of a building, but the difficulty will be greater if the building is mature, because then there isn't only one relationship, but many. The articulation of these influences is an unrepeatable creative act. There is no doubt that an architect manipulates memory consciously, but most of the times unconsciously. The knowledge, the information, the study of architects and architectural history tends or should tend to be incorporated, until it's lost in the unconscious or the subconscious of each one."1 Therefore, the present dissertation focuses on the description and architectural analyses of Gondomar's Multipurpose Pavilion, searching to decipher an unknown, even ignored, building in the magnitude of Álvaro Siza's career. Despite the absence of recognition, the Pavilion reveals itself as a fundamental conception for the interpretation of personal, urban and historical premises. "The past is a prison from which little can rid themselves gracefully and productively; it's worth a lot, however it's necessary to see it not in itself, but in light of ourselves." 2 In that sense, the dissertation's structure reviews historic prepositions in light of the present, of the «sizian» dynamics and of the Multipurpose Pavilion, following the subsequent process of projectual development: the location and its poetic dimensions, the implantation in a peripheral area, simultaneously urban and rural, the "journey" within the building and the functional distribution of a large scale container, the courtyards' hierarchy and the symmetrie's polyvalence, the complexity of the staircase system and the connective morphologic juncture, the sunhoods' typology and the correlation with movement or architectural gesture, the oval's multiple expression and the curve's sculptural understanding, the brick as a scarlet splash in a universe otherwise dominated by white, and, at last, the combination of the constructive execution with the space's apparent dematerialization. All of the previous chapters have in mind that the budget was quite limited for a building of these proportions, acknowledging the pursuit for coherent technical and aesthetic solutions, despite the scarcity of means.