Rua Passos Manuel (1877-1927). Análise Morfológica

Abstract

With this MA in Architecture we aim to analyse morphologically Passos Manuel Street, having in mind the period of time it began to be built (1877) and 1927. This urban area came up in the second half of the nineteenth century. By that time, there was an enormous trade and population growth, which led to meaningful change and development initiatives in the urban and building process in the City of Oporto. At the beginning, Passos Manuel Street was just a short narrow lane. However, as time went by it was getting longer and longer. In this way, it enabled both the traffic and the amount of building sites in the City of Oporto to increase considerably at those days. As on one hand this evolution occurred gradually during a rather long period of time, which included the transition into the twentieth century, and as on the other hand it happened when different town councillors were in charge throughout the decades, this street is a result of different architectural features, which ranges over a variety of distinctive space conceptions and time origins. Thus, being supported by reliable cartographic material and documents, our goal is to understand the evolutionary process of the street mentioned above and which the main directives of that process were. Through the analysis of the front elevations of the buildings we can find in this street, focussing especially on their formal elements of composition, we aim above all to understand and identify the way those front elevations were organised and how they together with the building principles managed to define the urban space of the town.