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Pousada da Costa; Pousada do Bouro
Views before interventions |
Object of study |
Thinking how an architect
connects abstract concepts and materialization throughout the design process, one is
compelled to face issues like context, available production systems or even biographical
circumstance. We will use two projects to follow changes within a particular conceptual
line, among impossibilities, opportunities of action and stimuli from the cultural
framework. The two works are separated by authorship and time. The generation gap between
the authors is about 30 years. They are Fernando Távora (born in 1923) and Eduardo Souto
de Moura (born in 1952). The time gap between the works is about 17 years (F.
Távoras Pousada da Costa, began in 1972 and Souto de Mouras Pousada de Bouro
in 1989). For ease of comparison, all other specific conditions are common to both works:
they are both commissioned by the same state-owned institution to adapt ruins of convents
to luxury hotels, and the sites are set apart by some mere 25 Km.
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Pousada da Costa (1972-85); Pousada de Bouro (1989-97)
Diagrams of historic evolution
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Conceptual line |
Both authors share a
generic attitude to the ruins: their respect for heritage doesnt mean stabilizing it
with a restoration and opposing it with whats new, like the Venice Charter says. On
the contrary, their view is that respect for heritage demands knowing it deeply and
interpreting it, in order to manipulate and develop it, as has always been the case
throughout history. "This is how the life of a building is begun, pursued and
continued over a period of eleven centuries, in the certainty that other centuries and
transformations will follow..."(1); "For the project as a whole, the ruins are
more important than the actual Monastery, since they represent available,
open, manipulable material, just as the building itself has been through history"
(2). The methodology is the same as that which has been employed throughout the centuries:
reassembly of components, mix of new parts with old ones and growth with contemporary
ideas and languages. This is why both architects publish diagrams showing the permanent
changes the existing buildings incurred over time. They also share -although in varying
degrees- a tendency towards formal reduction and anonymity.
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Pousada da Costa
Sucession of arches in the cloister |
Potential of the specific
conditions of work |
In this manner, however,
the boundary with the refused position (the opposition of languages) is a fine one which
requires further thoughts to be drawn, as thinking architecture is done not only through
concepts, but through images, sounds, techniques, perceptions, gestures and colours.
Starting with a significant gesture in the first work, by Távora: out of all the traces
of past stages of the existing building, systematically found during the long archeologic
studies, some of them are selected to play a role as an aesthetic feature 'explaining' the
historic relativity of the current state of the building. The fact that their choice is
very much a matter of opportunity and convenience from the formal point of view does not
deny the clarity of the concept. On the contrary, it helps our understanding of how the
particular circumstances of any project embody a potential of its own in the design
process.
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Pousada da Costa
General view;
View of new wing |
Method I |
For Távora, relating to
the past corresponds to "a dialogue (...) asserting similarities and continuity more
than cultivating differences and rupture" (3). In the new wing, that conceptual
challenge is addressed without any typological or metric continuity, for in the context of
historic evolution, a display of self-conscious formal devices would have been too
seductive and a sign of weakness. Instead, continuity is searched for in more subtle means
of expression. The facades convey the idea of a compact and textured volume. The
importance of texture (achieved by the glass divisions) lies in playing down reflexion by
the glass and setting a parallel with the windows of the existing building. As Kenneth
Frampton accurately points out, the connotations of the proportions are here an important
means to achieve the correct measure: "the elongated, two-by-seven window
openings evoke an aloof, almost aristocratic elegance, that is joined here with the
normative logic of a unself-conscious, quasi-industrial elevation. The result is a quiet
iteration that underlies and offsets the impassive horizontal mass of the existing
building" (4). Furthermore, colour is also used as a device to make blending
plausible. The same colour is used in the roofs, the windows and the extension. All this
goes to show that while actions deal with opportunity, methods are shaped by knowledge,
understanding and reflexion.
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Espigueiro (vernacular architecture) |
Available means of production |
What is
obvious and acknowledged by Távora himself is that this project in particular embodies
his deep study of the vernacular architecture of the area. He not only, as an architect,
integrated a team in charge of carrying out the Survey of Popular Portuguese Architecture
in the late fifties, and reflected on the subject through reading and writing, but he also
has kept in touch with his roots in the area, his birthplace. But of equal importance, at
the time of the project, there was still a portuguese construction culture of poor
materials and careful craft from which he was able to draw support, aware that
architecture is a collective achievement and can only be successfully carried out along
the potential of a societys prevalent technology.
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Pousada de Salamonde (1951-56) |
Cultural framework |
What is equally obvious
and acknowledged by the author is that he travelled widely, exploring modernist expressive
devices in the early years of his practice. In the fifties, in the four last CIAM
congresses, he observed the emerging relativity of the modernist movement. This freed him
to consider, at that point in his career, a search for rules to govern each situation.
Although he is not prepared to reveal precise references for his design in his
contemporaries -in order to stress his position that architecture must be one with life
and that solutions are unique- we can be sure that they exist. So, it is possible that the
series of inns by Januário Godinho, from as early as the fifties, have stimulated the
combination of modernist abstraction with vernacular textures that Távora and
others had already been trying in previous projects.
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Pousada de Bouro
General view;
View of the cloister;
View of the extension |
Method II |
When you first look at
Souto de Mouras work, however, you wonder where is the connection to this conceptual
line. For him, relating to the past means a systematic approach which seeks to consider
equally all periods of development of the building. From this point of view, a refusal to
restore the ruins was to be expected, since that option would, by definition, return them
to an earlier known state of the building at the expense of other periods. So, he sets out
on his ambitious task by maintaining the fundamental external figure of the existing ruins
and by taking their heterogeneous expression as found, only to make them part
of a new expressive system. Externally, however, this new expressive system is hardly
readable. On the outside the relationship between the elements of the ruin are unchanged,
by understating all signs of the current intervention. For instance, the cloister wall is
kept free-standing, as it was found. The absence of roof pitches, the absence of roof
eaves -the whole building is covered with a flat grass roof- and of visible window frames
is a concomitant move. Even something as big as an extension to accomodate services,
maintains the impression of being the convent precint wall which used to exist in the same
place.
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Pousada do
Bouro
Views of the fountain before and after intervention |
Method III |
That is why people keep
saying that the author wants to do a romantic ruin and he warns: "but it is not
true"(5) "the project aims to adapt, or rather, to make use of the stones
available to build a new building"(6). Relating to the past as a whole means acting
like them. In fact, when we know more about it, we find out that the ruins
were manipulated to a large extent through the buildings life and also in the
intervention. For instance because of the extension hidden under the platform, the
existing fountain was dismantled and rebuilt facing in another direction, in front of the
extension. Adjustments in height were also made to the arches inside the building to allow
for the new slab thickness, and existing doors were displaced. All these moves aim towards
stabilizing spaces and forms, and towards avoiding tensions in the potentially intricate
points of contact between old and new.
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Legacy |
Távora enunciated the
extent to which architecture is able to transform the world. With him, methods became
concentrated on interpreting and optimizing. Souto de Mouras manipulation of the
place is a device clearly indebted to this consciousness, and there are several
biographical connections to Távora to support this: from their cultural and disciplinary
private debates, to indirect connections like using the same contractor. However one
cannot help thinking that the generation gap has produced a real shift. Souto de
Mouras quest in architecture is for a return to essential rules. It is as if there
is a need for absolutes, even if they are no longer shared but held in private. His way of
expressing this is through the reduction of form and through an exploration of tactile and
visual qualities of materials.
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Pousada do Bouro
View of corridor |
Shift of the meaning |
So, in the interior, where
the creation of an environment for inhabitation is necessary, where a transformation to
support new uses is required, a stronger enphasis is put into the intervention. Here, the
materials of the ruin and those of the intervention form a expressive system of the utmost
importance. The new materials are carefully chosen for their colours, textures, ways of
aging and conotations, in such a way as to create a contrasting range, but still avoiding
the exotic and the unwonted. Floors, ceilings and wall finishes, where they exist, are
introduced with a psichological weight so as to connect to the massive existing walls.
Formally, analogy and neutrality are prefered. Such options about the inserted elements
complete the manipulation of the existing in order to provide a perceptive balance and
continuity in the final result. The new elements do not appear as something intrusive in
an alien logic, but rather integrate the old ones in a new logic. In the times of chaotic
landscape and failure of planning instruments, in the times of architecture as a lonely
and disciplinary activity, form and construction take value as rules to design but still
keep the subtlety required to express parity with past periods of architecture.
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Available means of production
II |
About the expression of
materials, we also must assess the issue of how Souto de Moura has been exploring the
changes which have been taking place in the Portuguese production system since the
1970s. The refined operations carried out in this work, finished in 97, are not
anymore related to craft, where knowledge stems from tradition and transformation from
manpower, nor are they achieved at huge expense by specialized firms. Rather it stems from
a production system where industry is not yet organized to fully normative principles and
therefore, one where special demands and labour-intensive solutions are still acceptable.
Practicing conditions raise issues which also have the potential to entail shifts in the
meaning.
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Forthcoming conditions |
Both the issues directly
conditioning materialization and the issues generally stimulating creativity suffered a
shift in this 17 year span. Conditions of work in Portugal will certainly change in the
forthcoming years towards increasingly restrictive standards: pre-fabrication,
specialization of workmanship, certification, more detailed regulations, even regulations
for mixing naturally functions in a city. They will also change but this
time together with most western countries- in the direction of a harder struggle for
quality, considering the contradiction between the current non-sustainable economic logic
and the decreasing resources at our disposal. These are conditions of work in which the
above-mentioned methods may be adapted to continue achieving broad meanings with
restricted actions.
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Bibliography |
(1) TÁVORA, Fernando - Santa Marinha
Convent. Guimarães, 1975-1984. "Fernando Távora", Lisboa, Editorial Blau,
1993, p. 112-118.
(2) SOUTO DE MOURA, Eduardo - "...like the chatter / of
chattering teeth". "Pousada Sta. Maria de Bouro", s.l., ed. Enatur,
Empresa Nacional de Turismo, S.A., 1997, p.23.
(3) TÁVORA, Fernando - Santa Marinha Convent. Guimarães, 1975-1984.
"Fernando Távora", Lisboa, Editorial Blau, 1993, p. 112-118.
(4) FRAMPTON, Kenneth In Search of a Laconic Line. A Note on
the School of Porto. "A&V", Madrid, 47, May-June 1994, p.118-120.
(5) COLLOVÁ, Roberto Bouro, a continual story.
"Eduardo Souto de Moura. Themes for Projects", Mendrisio/Milan, Accademia di
Architettura della Università della Svizzera Italiana / Skira editore, 1998, p. 23
- 33
(6) Santa Maria do Bouro Convent. Amares, Braga, 1989/....
"Eduardo Souto Moura", Lisboa, Editorial Blau, 1994, p. 138 141.
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