Modern Lisbon
In the words of José-Augusto França, Lisbon is the last of the old European cities and the first of the modern cities, as confirmed by the 1758 Baixa Pombalina plan undertaken for the reconstruction of the city destroyed by the 1755 earthquake, as a pioneering example of modern urban planning. Following the avant-garde plan, modern architecture in Portugal may be envisaged through three main moments according to specific policies undertaken during the long Estado Novo dictatorship (1926-1974).
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Housing Reloaded
Post-War Housing Complexes in Europe are symbols of architectural, technological and social aspirations. These grands ensembles of Mass Housing have nowadays begun to be appreciated by users and authorities, as integral part of the current city. Whether discussing demolition (as faced by the Smithsons' Robin Hood Gardens and Toulouse's Le Mirail, and commonly seen as a focus for social marginalization), or the growing phenomenon of heritagization (as implicit in the type of person now using the Marseille Unité d’Habitation), the debate today has mainly become centered on the question of: how to keep these large structures alive, while meeting contemporary standards of comfort? Characterized by adventurous experiments in the use of new materials and techniques, space creation and gender transformations, the obsolescence of these big complexes is determined on two different levels: the technical one (regarding comfort, such as thermal or acoustic, and the need for mechanical and safety improvements, as infrastructures, systems, elevators), and the functional one (involving space dimensions, organisation, orientation, and the introduction of new uses); all while complying with current regulatory standards. In addition, these buildings have frequently been intensively used and modified.
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LC – 50 Years After
Le Corbusier (LC) prolific personality as theorist, painter, sculptor, architect, urban planner, researcher, disseminator, thinker, and provocative activist, helped to make him a universal author. His dual and inseparable theoretical and practical activities represented a source for LC’s balanced inspirational and systematic method. Envisaging “la planète comme chantier”, LC drove his obsessive constructive impulse around the whole world, to nations such as Japan, Russia, Argentina and India. Thinking deeply about the human condition in the contemporary age, he looked for solutions to solve social, technical and spatial problems, believing that architecture could have the power to improve the world. To the question “architecture or revolution?” he answered “revolution can be avoided” through modern architecture.
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Reuse, Renovation and Restoration
The Modern Movement has demonstrated its long term legitimacy, as a concept endowed with an extraordinary and lasting longevity. Either way, it becomes increasingly important to acknowledge and value this heritage, in order to enable a skilled, informed and enlightened intervention. Such matters as materials and technology reuse, spatial and functional transformations as well as updating legislation, are part of the contemporary agenda. Knowing that many modern architects sought new heights of functionality and changeability, the challenge for today is how to deal with the heritage in relation to its continuously changing context, physical, economic and functional, as well as socio-cultural, political and scientific. I consider that the reuse project is starting to “make history” and I share the idea that heritage transforms itself with us. Therefore, modern architecture can be a resource that asks for our attention in terms of quality, economy and sustainability.
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Modern Housing. Patrimonio Vivo
Housing is a central program in contemporary architectural production. Incorporating civilizing values of 19th century culture, the house arrives in the 20th century at the time notions of private space and domestic comfort come to the fore in Western Culture as values inseparable from the emergence of the family in domestic space: the home. In 1951 Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), in his Darmstader sprache, “Bauen, Wohnen, Denken”, relates the word building (bau) with the verb “to be” and the action of “being” (bin), to conclude that dwelling is the fundamental trait of being, the mortals’ living condition. Looking to reframe the sense of construction and to identify the meaning of “being”, Heidegger’s criticism is moved by the failure of the so-called rational materialistic solution, and opens the discussion up to the re-evaluation of the design action as a unique, magical and creative action.
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High Density
The debates that followed the World Design Conference (WoDeCo, Tokyo, 1960) on the search for a “total Image for the 20th Century” pointed out among worldwide designers, architects and planners, viewpoints and intellectual ideas concerning the future of the city, particularly in the wake of technological and scientific advancement in industry. At the time of the WoDeCo, progressive architects formed the “Metabolism” group and proposed their concepts for dealing with the increasing complexity of the cities rising. Debating over the ideal city and promoting a kind of experimental architecture based on ideas of life styles and communities for a new era, its biological name suggests that buildings and cities should be designed in the same organic way that the material substance of a natural organism propagates adapting to its environment by changing its forms in rapid succession.
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For an Architect’s Training
The variety of discussions on architects’ mission, on architectural discipline and the recall on some key figures explain the argument of this Journal entitled For an Architect’s Training. The title quotes Walter Gropius’ “Blueprint for an architect’s training” spread through the French magazine L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui in February 1950 (number 28), dedicated to “Walter Gropius, the spread of an idea” and realized by Paul Rudolph under the direction of Gropius himself who developed his ideas on design education between art and technique, creation, research and applied science.
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Modern Africa, Tropical Architecture
Since the 1990s architectural historians discovered Modern architecture in Africa as part of a cultural production related to colonialism. With the introduction of postcolonial theory in the historiography of architecture, an exclusively ideological critical sense has been developed preventing disciplinary autonomy or practice of architecture and finally condemning any objective look. Recently, the development of concepts such as hybrid or the otherness has been promoting a nuanced historical analysis about architecture and politics in the 20th century in Africa. The recognition that a widespread awareness of Modern Movement architecture has always been serving colonization involves rethinking the basic principle of Modern welfare society and practiced architecture as a mission: how Modern principles have been exchanged, resulting from a Eurocentric culture with the cultures from the East and Africa. In addition, it must be said that the case of Sub–Saharan Lusophone Africa is now beginning to be studied in depth putting together peripheral universes.
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Global Design
Thanks to Finland, the motto “Survival of Modern” justifies going deeper in the relation that connects form and function, aesthetics and ethics. That’s also why the argument is Global Design. The aim of this collective and interdisciplinary reflexion is to contribute for the discussion that relates Modern heritage and interior space, common daily life and musealization of Modern Interior Spaces, gathered underneath a global strategy to better understand and preserve these delicate monuments. In fact, the interior space with all devices and furniture pieces is frequently neglected as an essential matter in safeguard interventions.
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Designing Modern Life
The aim is to contribute for the discussion that relates modern heritage and interior space, common daily life and musealization of Modern Interior Spaces, gathered underneath a global strategy, to better understand and preserve these delicate monuments. In fact, the interior space with all devices and furniture pieces is frequently not appreciated as an essential matter in safeguard interventions.
Ranging from restoration process research and know-how, new modern materials and techniques are discussed facing up to new conservation process and innovative rehabilitation solutions, as well. One knows that Modern spatiality must require furniture conceived under a unitary design concept, which implies today to identify every detail with the aim of a reconstruction process, where research on documentation is one of the success keys.
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