Diálogo entre Tradição e Modernidade. Aldeia do Barrocal do Douro

Abstract

I'm divided between the use of Barrocal do Douro as an excuse for the study of a Portuguese architectural development that particularly fascinates me, or the Portuguese modernism as a justification to my fascination by Barrocal. Resulting from a will of the Portuguese state in hydroelectric use on International Douro as a way of evolving the country, promotion and transmission of a cutting-edge modernity country the dams of Miranda, Picote and Bemposta were born. Of these three major industrial works, comes the need to create small villages to workers and their relatives, which most important example and the one for which I have most affection, is the village of Barrocal do Douro, born in the dam of Picote. The story of its birth is not only parallel, as superimposed on the birth of modern Portuguese architecture, which is, in my opinion, divergent or marginal to other histories and development of modernity (international). It refers to the location, culture, a mixture between an imposing government (Salazarismo), and an opposing Porto School. The influences are many, varied and slow. They seek Le Corbusier in his fascination with the machine and the functionalist architecture, organic architecture of the Swedes or Italians, which extend the concept of functionalism toward Man, and the Brazilian school that balances their primary colonial language and eclectic, with an organicism that meets its tradition. In a country that was doing picturesque architecture as a duty, and urged for an architecture breakthrough, these external interferences are received, perceived and modified, and help the tirelessly search for a Portuguese architectural identity. It is this combination between the beginning of the machine era and rationalism of the Modern Movement, with architecture mindful towards reality, sensitive to local traditions, materials, culture and landscape, in reunion of tradition and internationalism, that we can situate the works of Barrocal do Douro. Pioneering example in the country, an architecture that proudly takes its origin.