Incursão em Herzog & de Meuron: do institivo domesticado à autonomia do muro

Abstract

The purpose of this work, by articulating the academic and professional realities, refl ects the wish to design consciously, with a vast architectural discourse that relies on parameters that are essential to the idea of architecture that is intended to be followed. This is the search for a theory, not a paternalistic one with the wish of labeling or classifying any sort of practice, but to produce work and critical engines that will develop the project. We look for evidence in what was sensed, trying to validate themes that gave meaning to the identifi cation of ways of doing and seek suggestions for routes and possibilities. The essay starts with the project, with the objective need to justify the design process, and the project is its motivation and ultimate goal. This is about building the process of the project which is to come, a process that starts open, identifi es resources, creates conditions for some materials and outlines to get ideas and inventions that are the project. In order to do so we take the tools used in the experienced Herzog & de Meuron design process to deal with the enormity of things: wall and booklet. In the process of research these tools create an organizational principle: the wall, characterized by the fractionation of elements that form the basis of work and the booklet, which shows the themes that represent the phases of the project, giving an indication of further developments, suggesting options to study. The body of the dissertation has three movements: the formation of the practicable [confrontations], an introductory note that recognizes the directional parameters that gave meaning to an identifi cation of architecture; the practicable of the project [an approach], a wall which is the result of new information obtained during the experience of a practice, in the offi ce, which runs parallel to the research process; and the practicable of t the project [encounter], fi ve booklets of themes, outstanding syntheses, contributing as a whole to build a personal vocabulary, essential for the sharing of an idea of architecture that enables participatory integration in the professional reality. The thesis is a project process that translates the seduction by an attitude in the architecture: starts from something very real and experienced, but is simultaneously something imaginary. The result is open, waiting for the discoveries that will attach to these reference points that were marked for future directions, for an autonomy and critical atitude in the choice of the design.