Fragmento e Projecto. Reconversão de edifícios na obra de Eduardo Souto de Moura

Abstract

The actuality of the contemporary architecture passes each more time for the recovery and reconversion of buildings. Understood restoration as the conservation technique according to original image does not fit me here to debate. The result of the transformation of fragments in on the part for the architects, the moment of creation of the works to the one of the recovery of the past is how much current so pertinent subject. The growth of the city is also accumulation corresponding sediments to different times and to previous generations, today translated in the ruins that are a collective patrimony and that to all it says respect. The continuity between testimonials is possible according to valuation of the past in the construction of the future. Works of reconversion of monasteries in inns, such as "Santa Marinha da Costa" (Fernando Távora) and "Santa Maria do Bouro" (Eduardo Souto de Moura) constitute study cases that go beyond a inventive creation. For such both the authors are served of History as instrument to project. New project is the conscious of the identification of the past, of the evolution of the building along the time as reflected of different conjunctures and functions and of the capacity that ruin it has to remain as memory of the preexistence of the time. History in these projects is not limiting but inventive instrument. The principles long ago defined by Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc would only be insufficient in the current reconversion of buildings. However they had allowed opening new answers to the problem of the reconversion in architecture. Perhaps the inclusion of history in the modern architecture fit in Portugal the Fernando Távora: the identification of the place, of the natural and traditional characteristics that characterize it is the starting point for the incorporation of actuality techniques. This past and present relation between is also for Eduardo Souto de Moura important. The contemporary of this architect is translated many of its works that of my point of view juxtapose diverse times history and nature where the artificiality of the architecture inevitably falls. The transformation of the architecture is consequence of the share of the time and the ephemerid of materials. The "theater del Mondo" (Aldo Rossi) is intentionally a ephemeral work in its physical existence. A materially perpetual architecture that remains in the memory. Aldo Rossi says that the city is constructed by diverse parts, is also the different parts that constitute the project. For me, the recent project of reconversion and requalification of Souto de Moura - the Convent of the Bernardas in Tavira - represent the continuous evolution of the buildings that if overlaps and modifies along time. The Convent translates this fully, the time: the different stratus of the building is clear in the rhythmic reading of the windows in the façade. The place and the involving one now integrate the building reconverted into habitation and therefore acquiring new functions. In its requalification, the new program adopts it the preexistences. The recognition of the place of Fernando Távora, the reading of the city of Aldo Rossi, and also the influence of Siza Vieira in the contribution that had in the Quarter of S. Vítor and in the one of Kreuzberg, precedes the reading that makes of the preexistences, congregated at a first moment in the reconversion of a ruin in the Gerês, and now in the conscientious reinterpretation and recreation of the legacy so that Architecture can satisfy the necessities of the moment.