Florescência Telúrica: os contributos artísticos para a génese projetual de Camilo Rebelo

Abstract

With twenty-five years of practice, Camilo Rebelo's architectural work offers stimulating contributions to the broader architectural discourse, grounded in a continuous dialogue with art, architecture, and landscape. His thinking is based on an understanding of a sensitive place in conjunction with the artistic sphere, and, carefully sculpted, it materialises into an architecture of territory and mass, of a plastic nature and sensitive to the experience of the subject. Confident in the potential of art, architect Camilo Rebelo develops a practice that explores both the scope and the qualities of the artistic field. He deliberately benefits from various concepts derived from the work of artists - painting, sculpture, permanent and temporary installations, books, exhibitions - integrating them as references at the core of his design process. These elements inform not only the conceptual thinking but also the construction of the architectural work itself, enabling an exploration of the affinities between architecture and art, and deepening concepts that cut across both disciplines. This study presents a selection of three works that directly involve two Portuguese artists: Ângelo de Sousa and Rui Chafes. With different scales, dimensions, and programs, "Museu de Arte e Arqueologia do Vale do Côa", "Casa Promise" and "Ovo" reflect an architecture that emerges from a telluric interior and allows itself to be influenced both by the artistic sphere and by the artists themselves. These works broaden the understanding of interdisciplinarity between architecture and art through a parallel dialogue that brings the two closer together and highlights their shared contribution to architectural design. Although architecture and art are distinct disciplinary fields, the "contamination" of architecture by art generates new ideas and fosters the exploration of diverse themes. Furthermore, this artistic contribution can serve as a response to questions and constraints inherent to architectural practice. By exploring the solution to a problem through art, architecture is conceived. Architecture "is not the mother of all arts. It is one of the Arts, a sister, or a daughter perhaps."