(Dis)continuities in the public-private interface: the case of the projects of Caraíba by Joaquim Guedes in Brazil and Malagueira by Álvaro Siza in Portugal

Abstract

This communication proposal addresses the issue of the public-private interface out of critical readings and analyses around works by two architects from Escola Paulista and Escola do Porto, respectively. We refer to Joaquim Guedes and Álvaro Siza, and their projects in Caraíba (Bahia, Brazil) and Malagueira (Évora, Portugal). Based on those works, we aim to analyze the different understandings and conceptions on the relations between the public and private domains, in the specific context of housing, identifying (dis)continuities in the way of perceiving and dealing with the interface between the public and private spaces in Brazil and Portugal in the 1970s. Therefore, the object of this study is the public-private interface: the transitional space between the street and the interior of the dwelling, that is, an environment where the dual logic of the limit - internal/external, collective/individual, public/private - are naturally intricate. Coming from this, we argue that it was under a specific context in the 1970s, both in Brazil and in Portugal, that different approaches to the said interface were best managed. The hypothesis is that these approaches varied according to political, cultural, and social contexts, and according to principles such as the construction of a specific way of designing. These aspects converged in typologies, topographies, and the architects' minds, and, somehow, crossed the Atlantic. The works were analyzed based on criteria such as the insertion of housing-lots and the positioning of facades, streets, internal and external spaces, windows and doors, services, and recreational environments. This analysis, when correlated to contextual issues found in both cases, shows that there are similarities that, while not evident at first sight, mark a possible turning point in the way of designing the transitional public-private space in Brazil and Portugal.