O poder do Lugar - A concepção e a produção arquitectonica de Vitor Figueiredo

Abstract

This study has its origins in the strong belief that good Architecture has the power of making several areas to interact - socially, urbanely, politically and economically - throughout the places we reside in. We live in an era where a place seems to be judged as a point resilience in a World that has witnessed a growing interest from the general masses in isolated and presumptuous objects. That way, we think that a valid contribution would be precisely to research and analyze the architectural posture of someone like - Vítor Figueiredo (1929-2004) - searching not only his ideas and intentions, but mainly thinking about his work. In the study dedicated to the architect Vítor Figueiredo, we highlight three of his achievements: the dwelling-house at São João do Estoril (1958-1960); the housing complex known as "Cinco Dedos" at Chelas, in Lisboa (1973-1979); and the nucleus of Mitra at "Universidade de Évora" (1991-1995), work to which we concede special relevance and that we think to be the most eloquent achievement of the master. The election of these three pieces as main subject to the study appeared for chronologic and thematic reasons, since they make us travel throughout all his architectural production. Also because we feel that they all describe different phases of his professional life. What we wanted to do was that through the architectural analysis, the attitude related to the act of project, the link between the place and the urban context, the adapted structure of its space, the used material, the idea developed about the user, of all the three pieces selected, will reveal his posture: if it endures, if it is a synthesis or if it turned out to be something that opposes the cultural traditions that exist. To find out many times as hypothesis (because there isn't enough information), the rules, technological and ethical that it follows, in a way that it will allow us to unveil the rules to elaborate his concepts, theories and even methods, so that later on we can establish resemblances or differences related with dominant architectural conceptions. Vítor Figueiredo made a stubborn pledge about the defense of the principles of a rigid authenticity that made that his marginal path ends up being discovered as one of the most capable pieces of all Portuguese architectural production. In the exuberant world, the architecture is found in a place distant from the most released and promoted "isms", searching the meaning of places as genuine values, in order to embrace the pasts' heritage in nowadays projects. To know and understand his work it's an obligation to know the scale and the place, and also comprehend the link between forms and life, walk by the place, feel the light, the shadow, observe the proportions of it all in plain possession and delight of all human senses.