Os cafés da baixa do Porto. Materialidade, uso e significado do espaço construído

Abstract

A built space tells stories in specific times of its existence. In its construction and physical qualities, this space is influenced by a vaster spatial context, with a sociocultural nature particular to a certain time period. Once built, its spatial dimension gives rise to life experiences, social contacts, communications, conveying of ideas; space becomes a nucleus of specific socioculturality, which in turn reflects itself on the very (re)definition of the surrounding environment. This thesis aims at understanding space taking as reference the relations that are established between its materiality and the extra adjoining material dimensions that it encompasses, and how these relations can be found within a particular context. By analyzing coffee shops (and similar premises used for the sale and consumption of drinks) located in Oporto's downtown (a territory that more continuously has preserved the presence of these spaces since they emerged in the city) that by their recreational nature (allowing informal and less rigid continuities, and thus more authentic in translating ways of being and communicating), by their semipublic nature (providing both a vast and assorted absorption of publics and its observation and analysis in a controlled way), and by their undeniable bond with cultural trends and mutations), the final aim is to understand how spaces are built in order to try to address specific needs of particular sociocultural environments and groups, and how―once built―they answer them (which life experiences and sociocultural exchanges are indeed processed within them), and the relevance of their role in (re)defining a territory or a culture. After understanding the territory under study, followed by an approach on the importance of usage in architecture (a concept that comprises the general modes of interaction between man, sociocultural context and the space in which he lives), there follows an empirical study based on the gathering of information, firstly at the territorial scale and then, more specifically, of the coffee shops spaces and their physical nature and human ambience. This information is then systematized and comparatively analyzed in order to understand the relations between the diverse 'coffee shops' and the territory and among themselves, and also to try to understand how do materialities connect themselves with the human dimensions, and what role do these sociocultural 'containers' play in (re)structuring their environment