O tempo e a Luz de um Espaço Público: a Praça da República no Porto

Abstract

"The theme has a secondary importance to me, I want to represent what lives between the object and myself."2 (I'm here for some time... I left the Lapa subway station, I crossed the Bairro da Bouça, where I stopped briefly to see children playing in the spaces between each block of housing. Then, I went up to Rua da Boavista where I bumped with the bustle of people and cars from a typical weekday. When I reached the square, before entering the garden, I took a walk around the walks surrounding it; I saw the military barracks, the houses... now I'm here, sitting on the grass, under the shade of a tree to which I leaned, observing what surrounds me... - observing the time and the light that the regularity of this simple rectangle contains.) To observe, feel and enjoy what lives in the Public Space, nothing is better than travel it, so there is nothing between it and ourselves. This dissertation takes as its subject the forms of public space and adopts the Praça da República, in Oporto as a practical case where we consider the specifics of the historic city's space. What is proposed is an itinerary for those who were the first cities - Athens and Rome - in order to face the history and the ancient places as role models in the organization of new urban spaces; the needs of the society today are different from the old times, however, the aim is to underline the potentials that the public spaces offers in the field of the meeting and social interaction, so the closed spaces do not become an excessive recourse to the development of the contemporary activities. Thus, we suggest the adoption of sensitivity contained in modern art as a mean to absorb, in the contemporary context, the clearness and innocence of physical and fugacious events that encloses a historic townscape. So, it is proposed a journey to Praça da República. The theme of public space is studied in Praça da República on three levels. In the first and second time, it is the study of the technical part of the public space where all physical elements of the space are analyzed as well as the forms of residence and equipment that characterize it. And in a third one is shown the analysis of the sensitive part of the public space where the issue of time and light emerge as key elements, along with the question of contemporary society. So, it was defined as the first operation to develop, the analysis of light in the case study. Being it different in each season, seizing it by photographic mechanisms in the different seasons, at different times of the day has become urgent in order to capture the light and the image of the Square during the autumn. The light was the first factor analyzed.