Entre a Terra e o Céu. Do pátio e do claustro como objecto de intervenção

Abstract

This work has as object the study of the cloister / courtyard as space of architectural composition and intervention, with the purpose of trying to understand which are its compositional potentialities in the architectural project, both throughout history and nowadays. In a first part it will be presented a reading with a historical-theoretical side about the cloister as an architectural type and symbolic element, trying to establish the main differences between the space of the courtyard and of the cloister (as a perfect courtyard) and its similarities. By other words, what makes a cloister a cloister and not just a courtyard? We will also travel trough the history of these two spaces, with special incidence in the space of the cloister, in order to understand the formal stability that it early reached. We will also do a brief passage through the period of liberalism, time of rupture of catholic church´s powers that will culminate in the extinction of the religious orders, leaving countless monastic structures to the mercy of new uses, that in a certain way are also study objects of this work, since, as we will see, some of the presented examples are the result of that abandonment and later reuses. Alongside a more theoretical approach, based on a reflection from notions conveyed from the thematic bibliography, it will also be done an analysis of different examples. It will then be presented cloistered type buildings that suffered, mostly, interventions, which aim to study the space of the cloister in order to understand if those interventions changed the space´s character and/or its identity. The aim won´t be to catalog or classify the spaces as "cloister" and "courtyard" but to analyze the elements that refer to each denomination, as well as its transformation(s). In those cases of buildings that didn´t suffer any kind of intervention, we intend to analyze the space that corresponds to the cloister, because we consider it to be a reinterpretation of the traditional said cloister. The example´s analysis will be based in visits to the locations and will be systematized through matrices of reading of the different examples. With the present method we intend to understand how far these interventions interfere in the space´s formal character, being of the whole of the construction or participating in urban morphology. We will conclude with a short approach on the cloister nowadays, in order to understand how the values of that space have reached these days and if it still makes sense to speak about cloisters, referring to the mental image that we make of that space; or if, on the other hand, the cloister has nowadays assumed a new interpretation constituting itself as an architectural practice theme (due to the types´ evolution), that can even be found in constructions that have nothing to do with religious institutions, context that saw the initial conformation of this type.