OPEN CALL: SOPHIA JOURNAL ISSUE Nº 7 AND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ”Landscapes of Care: the Emergency of Landscapes of Care in Unstable Territories"

1. Armin Linke, Lake Assal, extraction of salt, Djibouti, Africa, 2012. Courtesy Armin Linke and Vistamare / Vistamarestudio, Pescara / Milano.

2. Armin Linke, Kawah Ijen Volcano, Biau (Jawa Timur), Indonesia, 2016. Courtesy Armin Linke and Vistamare / Vistamarestudio, Pescara / Milano.

OPEN CALL: SOPHIA JOURNAL ISSUE Nº 7 AND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
”Landscapes of Care: Emergency of Landscapes of Care in Unstable Territories"

Editors: Susana Ventura and Andreia Alves de Oliveira
Guest Editor: Armin Linke

PT/ENG

Abstract deadline: 27 December 2021
Manuscript deadline (Conference): 28 February 2022
Manuscript deadline (Journal): 5 September 2022
International Conference (dtbc): June 2022
Publication date (tbc): by December 2022

Sophia Journal is currently accepting submissions on the theme of its third thematic cycle “Landscapes of Care”, addressing contemporary photography and visual practices that focus on how architecture understood in a wide sense can help to heal a broken planet. The concept of “Landscapes of Care” has increasingly been adopted by diverse areas of study, from health geography to the arts and architecture. It allows us to understand architecture, city and territory as living and inclusive organisms, constituted by multifaceted landscapes with complex social and organisational spatialities which embody the difference and the other, the strange, the unfamiliar, the indigenous, the human and the non-human. Our aim is to explore the ways in which the image can be used as a meaningful instrument of research about the multifaceted complex socioeconomic, political, historical, technical and ecological dimensions of architecture, city and territory that testify, question or emerge from those relationships of care.

For the 7th issue of Sophia Journal and first issue in the cycle, we are focusing on the emergence of landscapes of care in unstable territories. These territories may be, but are not exclusive to: the desert, the icy lands, the rainy forests; territories within uncertain boundaries, e.g. between land and water; territories inhabited by native communities; territories that dramatically alter their configuration due to extreme weather conditions and scarce resources, or which natural resources are violently exploited and violated. Such territories hold vital information about patterns of resistance, flexibility, transformation and metamorphosis, enlightening the problems of vulnerability and resilience in the unforeseen future while opening up new perspectives of design, including new ways of poetically inhabiting the world as a place of encounter between species (following Haraway’s motto “staying with the trouble” and Guattari’s demand: “We need new social and aesthetic practices, new practices of the Self in relation to the other, to the foreign, the stranger”), protecting the ecosystems and understanding architecture, more than the distribution of spaces, as the distribution of the sensible.

We are looking for submissions that engage with the issues above in the form of theoretical papers, visual essays, interviews, and critical reviews of publications, exhibitions, and conferences.

A selection of theoretical papers and visual essays will simultaneously be presented at the International Conference we are helding in connection with the 7th issue of Sophia Journal. This will take place at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP) and it will encompass a live and videoconference programme organised by the Centre for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism (CEAU) at FAUP, in partnership with other institutions to be announced.

Submission instructions

To submit your proposal please send a 500-word abstract (including references and a maximum of five images) and a short bio for each author (up to 70 words each) by the 27th of December 2021. Submission of abstracts is done through our OJS platform, by registering and submitting at: https://www.up.pt/revistas/index.php/sophia/index

Selected authors will be notified by the 15th of January 2022 and will be expected to deliver a full paper (between 3000 to 6000 words) or a visual essay (length between 6 to 8 pages, plus text between 500 to 1000 words), by the 28th of February 2022.

Please note that all theoretical papers will be subject to peer review. The other modalities of submissions we publish (visual essays, interviews and critical reviews) are not subjected to peer review. Acceptance of an abstract in any of these modalities does not guarantee publication.

For guidelines on the submission process and our editorial policies, please visit our website at: https://www.up.pt/revistas/index.php/sophia/index

For any queries:

Please contact our Editors at info.sophiajournal@arq.up.pt

About Sophia Journal

We are an academic, peer-reviewed journal, published by the Centre for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism (CEAU) / research group Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, Portugal. Created in 2016, Sophia Journal publishes theoretical articles and visual essays that investigate and think critically the intersections between the image and architecture. We understand both terms in a wide sense: the image of photography, painting, drawing, cinema, video, T.V., new media; and architecture as landscape, territory, city, spatiality, built environment.

OPEN CALL: SOPHIA JOURNAL ISSUE Nº 7 E CONFERÊNCIA INTERNACIONAL ”Landscapes of Care: the Emergency of Landscapes of Care in Unstable Territories"

1. Armin Linke, Lake Assal, extraction of salt, Djibouti, Africa, 2012. Courtesy Armin Linke and Vistamare / Vistamarestudio, Pescara / Milano.

2. Armin Linke, Kawah Ijen Volcano, Biau (Jawa Timur), Indonesia, 2016. Courtesy Armin Linke and Vistamare / Vistamarestudio, Pescara / Milano.

OPEN CALL: SOPHIA JOURNAL ISSUE Nº 7 AND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
”Landscapes of Care: Emergency of Landscapes of Care in Unstable Territories"

Editoras: Susana Ventura and Andreia Alves de Oliveira
Editor Convidado: Armin Linke

PT/ENG

Prazo para envio de resumos: 27 Dezembro 2021
Prazo para submissão de manuscritos (Conferência): 28 Fevereiro 2022
Prazo para submissão de manuscritos (Revista): 5 Setembro 2022
Conferência Internacional (data a confirmar): Junho 2022
Data de publicação (a confirmar): até Dezembro 2022

A Sophia Journal está a aceitar submissões sobre o tema do seu terceiro ciclo temático "Landscapes of Care", abordando a fotografia contemporânea e outras práticas visuais que se debruçam sobre a arquitectura num sentido lato e como esta pode ajudar a cuidar de um planeta em vias de destruição. O conceito de "landscapes of care" tem sido progressivamente adoptado em várias áreas do conhecimento, desde a geografia da saúde até às artes e à arquitectura. Permite-nos entender a arquitectura, e os temas conexos da cidade e do território, enquanto organismos vivos e inclusivos, constituídos por paisagens multifacetadas com espacialidades sociais e organizacionais complexas, que incorporam a diferença e o/a outro/a, tudo o que é estranho, desconhecido, indígena, humano e não humano. O nosso objectivo é explorar os modos em que a imagem pode ser usada enquanto instrumento significativo de investigação sobre as variadas e complexas dimensões socioeconómicas, políticas, históricas, técnicas e ecológicas da arquitectura, cidade e território que testemunham, questionam ou emergem dessas relações de cuidado.

No volume 7 da Sophia Journal e primeiro deste ciclo, abordamos a emergência de “landscapes of care” em territórios instáveis. Estes territórios podem ser, entre outros: o deserto; as áreas geladas; as florestas tropicais; territórios com fronteiras e demarcações incertas, por exemplo entre a terra e a água; territórios habitados por comunidades nativas; territórios cuja configuração foi alterada dramaticamente devido a eventos meteorológicos extremos e recursos escassos, ou cujos recursos naturais são violentamente explorados e violados. Estes territórios contêm informação vital sobre padrões de resistência, flexibilidade, transformação e metamorfose, chamando a atenção para os problemas da vulnerabilidade e resiliência num futuro imprevisível, e ao mesmo tempo abrindo novas perspectivas para o design, incluíndo novas formas de habitar poeticamente o mundo enquanto espaço de encontro entre espécies (seguindo o moto de Donna Haraway “staying with the trouble” e a reinvidicação de Guattari de acordo com a qual “necessitamos novas práticas sociais e estéticas, novas práticas do Eu em relação ao outro/a, ao/à estrangeiro/a, à/ao estranha/o”), protegendo os ecossistemas e entendendo a arquitectura como, mais do que a distribuição de espaços, a distribuição do sensível.

Procuramos submissões que abordem estes temas na forma de artigos teóricos, ensaios visuais, entrevistas, e recensões críticas de publicações, exposições e conferências. Uma selecção de artigos teóricos e ensaios visuais será apresentada, simultaneamente, na Conferência Internacional, organizada paralelamente e em conjunção com o Volume 7 da Sophia Journal. A Conferência terá lugar na Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto (FAUP), num formato híbrido (presencial e digital), com organização do Centro de Estudos em Arquitectura e Urbanismo (CEAU) da FAUP, em parceria com outras instituições a anunciar.

Instruções de submissão

Para submeter a sua proposta, por favor envie um resumo com 500 palavras (incluíndo referências bibliográficas e um máximo de cinco imagens) e uma biografia concisa de cada autor/a (até 70 palavras cada) até ao dia 27 de Dezembro de 2021. A submissão de resumos é feita exclusivamente na nossa plataforma OJS, através de registo e submissão no seguinte endereço: https://www.up.pt/revistas/index.php/sophia/index

As/os autores/as seleccionadas/os serão notificadas/os até ao dia 15 de Janeiro de 2022 e terão de submeter um artigo final (entre 3000 a 6000 palavras) ou um ensaio visual (entre 6 a 8 páginas, com 500 a 1000 palavras) até ao dia 28 de Fevereiro de 2022.

Todos os artigos teóricos serão sujeitos ao processo de revisão por pares, também chamado arbitragem científica. As outras modalidades de submissão que publicamos (ensaios visuais, entrevistas e recensões críticas) não estão sujeitas ao processo de revisão por pares. A aceitação de resumos em qualquer das modalidades, que publicamos, não garante a publicação dos artigos finais na revista.

Para mais informação sobre o processo de submissão e as nossas políticas editoriais, por favor visite o nosso website: https://www.up.pt/revistas/index.php/sophia/index

Para qualquer questão:

Por favor contacte as/os Editoras/es através do email: info.sophiajournal@arq.up.pt

Sobre a Sophia Journal

Somos uma revista académica com arbitragem científica, publicada pelo Centro de Estudos em Arquitectura e Urbanismo (CEAU) / grupo de investigação Arquitectura, Arte e Imagem (AAI) da Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto.

Criada em 2016, a Sophia Journal publica artigos teóricos e ensaios visuais que investigam e pensam criticamente as intersecções entre a imagem e a arquitectura. Entendemos ambos os termos em sentido lato: a imagem da fotografia, pintura, desenho, cinema, video, televisão, novos media; a arquitectura enquanto paisagem, território, cidade, espacialidade, built environment.

Lançamento e apresentação da publicação THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: CARLOS RAMOS PAVILION AND BOUÇA SOCIAL HOUSING by Mark Durden and João Leal

Lançamento e apresentação da publicação
THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: CARLOS RAMOS PAVILION AND BOUÇA SOCIAL HOUSING by Mark Durden and João Leal

14 Outubro | 18:30 | Fundação Instituto Arquitecto José Marques da Silva (FIMS)

PT/ENG

O lançamento e apresentação da publicação “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project” tem como base o início da coleção da publicação scopionewspaper jornal focalizada no trabalho desenvolvido pelos fotógrafos Mark Durden e João Leal envolvendo uma seleção de edifícios arquitetónicos concebidos por Álvaro Siza para a série intitulada "A Ideia de Álvaro Siza".

O evento contará com a presença de Luís Urbano, Vice-Presidente da Fundação Instituto Arquitecto José Marques da Silva (FIMS) que fará a abertura da mesa. A sessão contará com a presença dos fotógrafos e autores Mark Durden e João Leal, bem como do arquiteto, programador cultural e curador Nuno Grande, sendo a moderação da conversa que se segue em torno do universo da fotografia e da arquitectura assegurada por Pedro Leão Neto diretor da publicação scopionewspaper journal que fará a introdução dos presentes, bem como do projeto Fotografia Documental e Artística: Um Olhar Contemporâneo sobre a Arquitetura Portuguesa e The Idea de Álvaro Siza. O objetivo desta sessão será o de explorar a singularidade e o significado das relações que podem ser estabelecidas entre os fotógrafos, os seus processos artísticos e a arquitectura e ideias-chave do arquitecto, nomeadamente a sobre o Pavilhão Carlos Ramos, o complexo habitacional do Bairro da Bouça e Álvaro Siza. A conversa decorrerá em inglês e e contará com a presença do arquitecto Álvaro Siza.

Este lançamento é uma iniciativa da AAI/CEAU/FAUP | scopio Editions, em colaboração com a Fundação Marques da Silva.
Vai decorrer no Palacete Lopes Martins e inicia-se às 18h30.
A entrada é livre, mas sujeita à lotação do espaço.

About the session topic

The lunch and presentation of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project” will be attended by the photographers Mark Durden and João Leal who are the authors of this photography series focused on the work of Álvaro Siza, as well as by Nuno Grande, the architect and curator who writes the probing essay “In Praise of Light and Shadows" for this this series, as well as by Pedro Leão Neto the Director of scopionewspaper journal that has been curating and publishing the series collection The Idea of Álvaro Siza by Mark Durden and João Leal “.

The aim is to encourage an exploratory and critical debate between the various authors involved in this curatorial, photography and editorial work around the architecture of Álvaro Siza, namely this series focused on the Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project. This series results from the work developed by the former two authors involving a selection of architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”, which has been accompanied by research group AAI and Pedro Leão Neto since Mark Durden and João Leal began to photograph and select Siza´s buildings for this project in Portugal.

After a concise presentation about each of the authors, Pedro Leão Neto will briefly contextualizing the work of The Idea of Álvaro Siza and then will give the word to the photographers for a statement about their photographic experience of Siza's work, based on this series focused on the Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project. In a second moment, the word will be given to Nuno Grande in order to understand how accordingly to his way of thinking as architect and curator the photography of Mark Durden and João Leal has captured essential aspects of Álvaro Siza´s work. The objective is to promote a critical debate about the world of photography and architecture, seeking to explore the singularity and significance of the relationships that can be established between the photographers and their artistic processes when communicating the architecture and key ideas of the architect, in this case The Idea of the Álvaro Siza.

About scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project” by Mark Durden and João Leal

scopionewspaper is an Architecture, Art & Image Research publication with a special interest in Photography as an instrument of inquiry and expression being one of the editorial collections of scopio Editions, being the editorial responsibility of the AAI research group (Architecture, Art and Image) integrated into the R&D center of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto called CEAU (Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies).

In this issue of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project” (# 1 December 2020), we feature the photography series by Mark Durden and João Leal focusing on the architecture of the Carlos Ramos Pavilion school building and the Bouça Council Housing Project, the product of their work in selecting architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”, which I have been accompanying since they began to photograph and select Siza’s buildings for this project in Portugal.

Some of the works from this series “The Idea of Álvaro Siza” have also been included in the set of case studies on Contemporary Photography Projects in Portuguese Architecture in Visual Spaces of Change (VSC), a publicly funded research projected coordinated at FAUP by the Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) group at the CEAU Research Centre. The thematic gallery of VSC where this photography project is incorporated is concerned with contemporary photography projects that combine various artistic strategies applied to the universe of architectural photography. It understands architecture as both subject and artistic matter, able to be of particular interest to a specialized public, as well as accessible to the general public through publications either in book form or online in its digital collection. The VSC research project and its galleries of diverse contemporary photography projects seeks to help advance the internationalization, dissemination and visibility of Oporto city spaces, its architecture and cultural memories. This will be achieved mainly through its online platform and diverse publications in books, catalogues and special editions, as is the case of this collection in scopionewspaper “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”.

“The Idea of Álvaro Siza” is a Contemporary Photography project that recognises architecture as both subject and artistic matter and explores a visual strategy that moves away from traditional mainstream architectural photography. In this series Mark Durden and João Leal are seeking to expand the comprehension of architecture by investigating photography’s capacity as a unique form of expression able to create an architectural promenade in which the images move between documentary and poetical depictions. Through their series, the viewer is able to sense both the magical experience that Siza’s architectural spaces produce for us and how light and nature interplay within those spaces. Furthermore, their photographs reveal how Siza’s spatial forms relate with the context, offering a deeper understanding of the architect’s oeuvre.

We are honoured to have the architect, cultural programmer and curator Nuno Grande as our invited author for this issue of scopionewspaper journal, in which he offers insightful reading in “In praise of light and shadows”, about Mark Durden and João Leal´s series “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: the Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project”.

Editorial and Advisory Board
Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) research group Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

scopio Editions
ISBN: 978-989-54878-4-4
ISSN: 2183-6906

Critical essays

"In praise of light and shadows"

by Nuno Grande

The interaction of light and shadow has always fascinated architects, and even more so since Le Corbusier’s famous quote from 1923, published in Vers une Architecture, in which he describes architecture as “the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light”. This game, which thus motivated the painters of Purism and Cubism – among whom Le Corbusier would come to be included – contributed in great part to the definition of the aesthetic ideals of the artistic avant-garde in the West in the first half of the 20th century. Associated with the purity of crystal, with the idea of total transparency, and with the blurring of the boundaries between the interior and the exterior, this very same game served as the conceptual premise of (and later as a critical challenge to) the architecture of the Modern Movement.

(...)
The photographic work of Mark Durden and João Leal focusing on Álvaro Siza’s work in Porto – now published by Scopio Newspaper – goes in search of not only this same game of shadows upon the target surfaces of the façades and the interiors of the buildings but also the multiplicity of transparencies and penumbras that unfold through their ample glazed windows.

The photographs do not shun the presence of nature, of the inhabitant, or of the citizen; to the contrary, they seek out these precise moments of the day in which, at the same time, the trees are reflected or cast shadows on Siza’s architecture and in which the human presence-absence is revealed in the objects or graffiti left on it. It is as if, for Mark Durden and João Leal, Siza’s works were blank pages waiting for daily life to be written or printed upon them. 

This perspective “upon” the walls or “through” the windows of the building takes on a near ghost-like character, something that is reinforced by its colourless tone, intentionally created by overexposure to the milky light at dawn or dusk. In these images, one feels the spectral presence of Le Corbusier or Adolf Loos – depicted in the fenêtre en longueur, or in the small “eyes” of the Faculty of Architecture building – or perhaps Alvar Aalto or Bruno Taut, in the rhythm alternating between the stairs, verandas and galleries of the Bairro da Bouça. These phantoms “live” there, reminding us that the best architecture is always the result of a revisit with and a crisscrossing of countless memories.

(...)

"A conversation with nature and the temporality of light/reflexes"

by Pedro Leão Neto
The series start by capturing the geometric forms and elements of some of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto´s buildings and it is clear from the start how light and reflections are the nuclear elements that are explored when responding to the edifices’ poetics and the geometries of the constructed forms. It is in the observation of the temporality of light/reflexes and in reimagining its realms within that the series offers another perspective on the FAUP spaces, one that is renewed, a perspective of a graceful understanding through the distortions and abstractions of the buildings’ structures.

(...)

Launching of THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: CARLOS RAMOS PAVILION AND BOUÇA SOCIAL HOUSING by Mark Durden and João Leal

Launching
THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: CARLOS RAMOS PAVILION AND BOUÇA SOCIAL HOUSING by Mark Durden and João Leal

14 October | 18:30 | Fundação Instituto Arquitecto José Marques da Silva (FIMS)

PT/ENG

The launch and presentation of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project” will be attended by the photographers Mark Durden and João Leal who are the authors of this photography series focused on the work of Álvaro Siza, as well as by Nuno Grande, the architect and curator who writes the probing essay “In Praise of Light and Shadows" for this this series, as well as by Pedro Leão Neto the Director of scopionewspaper journal that has been curating and publishing the series collection The Idea of Álvaro Siza by Mark Durden and João Leal “.

The aim is to encourage an exploratory and critical debate between the various authors involved in this curatorial, photography and editorial work around the architecture of Álvaro Siza, namely this series focused on the Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project. This series results from the work developed by the former two authors involving a selection of architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”, which has been accompanied by research group AAI and Pedro Leão Neto since Mark Durden and João Leal began to photograph and select Siza´s buildings for this project in Portugal.

After a concise presentation about each of the authors, Pedro Leão Neto will briefly contextualizing the work of The Idea of Álvaro Siza and then will give the word to the photographers for a statement about their photographic experience of Siza's work, based on this series focused on the Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project. In a second moment, the word will be given to Nuno Grande in order to understand how accordingly to his way of thinking as architect and curator the photography of Mark Durden and João Leal has captured essential aspects of Álvaro Siza´s work. The objective is to promote a critical debate about the world of photography and architecture, seeking to explore the singularity and significance of the relationships that can be established between the photographers and their artistic processes when communicating the architecture and key ideas of the architect, in this case The Idea of the Álvaro Siza.

This launch is an initiative of AAI/CEAU/FAUP | scopio Editions, in collaboration with the Marques da Silva Foundation.
It will take place at Palacete Lopes Martins and starts at 18h30.
Entrance is free, but subject to space capacity.

About scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project” by Mark Durden and João Leal

scopionewspaper is an Architecture, Art & Image Research publication with a special interest in Photography as an instrument of inquiry and expression being one of the editorial collections of scopio Editions, being the editorial responsibility of the AAI research group (Architecture, Art and Image) integrated into the R&D center of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto called CEAU (Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies).

In this issue of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project” (# 1 December 2020), we feature the photography series by Mark Durden and João Leal focusing on the architecture of the Carlos Ramos Pavilion school building and the Bouça Council Housing Project, the product of their work in selecting architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”, which I have been accompanying since they began to photograph and select Siza’s buildings for this project in Portugal.

Some of the works from this series “The Idea of Álvaro Siza” have also been included in the set of case studies on Contemporary Photography Projects in Portuguese Architecture in Visual Spaces of Change (VSC), a publicly funded research projected coordinated at FAUP by the Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) group at the CEAU Research Centre. The thematic gallery of VSC where this photography project is incorporated is concerned with contemporary photography projects that combine various artistic strategies applied to the universe of architectural photography. It understands architecture as both subject and artistic matter, able to be of particular interest to a specialized public, as well as accessible to the general public through publications either in book form or online in its digital collection. The VSC research project and its galleries of diverse contemporary photography projects seeks to help advance the internationalization, dissemination and visibility of Oporto city spaces, its architecture and cultural memories. This will be achieved mainly through its online platform and diverse publications in books, catalogues and special editions, as is the case of this collection in scopionewspaper “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”.

“The Idea of Álvaro Siza” is a Contemporary Photography project that recognises architecture as both subject and artistic matter and explores a visual strategy that moves away from traditional mainstream architectural photography. In this series Mark Durden and João Leal are seeking to expand the comprehension of architecture by investigating photography’s capacity as a unique form of expression able to create an architectural promenade in which the images move between documentary and poetical depictions. Through their series, the viewer is able to sense both the magical experience that Siza’s architectural spaces produce for us and how light and nature interplay within those spaces. Furthermore, their photographs reveal how Siza’s spatial forms relate with the context, offering a deeper understanding of the architect’s oeuvre.

We are honoured to have the architect, cultural programmer and curator Nuno Grande as our invited author for this issue of scopionewspaper journal, in which he offers insightful reading in “In praise of light and shadows”, about Mark Durden and João Leal´s series “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: the Carlos Ramos Pavilion and the Bouça Council Housing Project”.

Editorial and Advisory Board
Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) research group Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

scopio Editions
ISBN: 978-989-54878-4-4
ISSN: 2183-6906

Critical essays

"In praise of light and shadows"

by Nuno Grande

The interaction of light and shadow has always fascinated architects, and even more so since Le Corbusier’s famous quote from 1923, published in Vers une Architecture, in which he describes architecture as “the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light”. This game, which thus motivated the painters of Purism and Cubism – among whom Le Corbusier would come to be included – contributed in great part to the definition of the aesthetic ideals of the artistic avant-garde in the West in the first half of the 20th century. Associated with the purity of crystal, with the idea of total transparency, and with the blurring of the boundaries between the interior and the exterior, this very same game served as the conceptual premise of (and later as a critical challenge to) the architecture of the Modern Movement.

(...)
The photographic work of Mark Durden and João Leal focusing on Álvaro Siza’s work in Porto – now published by Scopio Newspaper – goes in search of not only this same game of shadows upon the target surfaces of the façades and the interiors of the buildings but also the multiplicity of transparencies and penumbras that unfold through their ample glazed windows.

The photographs do not shun the presence of nature, of the inhabitant, or of the citizen; to the contrary, they seek out these precise moments of the day in which, at the same time, the trees are reflected or cast shadows on Siza’s architecture and in which the human presence-absence is revealed in the objects or graffiti left on it. It is as if, for Mark Durden and João Leal, Siza’s works were blank pages waiting for daily life to be written or printed upon them. 

This perspective “upon” the walls or “through” the windows of the building takes on a near ghost-like character, something that is reinforced by its colourless tone, intentionally created by overexposure to the milky light at dawn or dusk. In these images, one feels the spectral presence of Le Corbusier or Adolf Loos – depicted in the fenêtre en longueur, or in the small “eyes” of the Faculty of Architecture building – or perhaps Alvar Aalto or Bruno Taut, in the rhythm alternating between the stairs, verandas and galleries of the Bairro da Bouça. These phantoms “live” there, reminding us that the best architecture is always the result of a revisit with and a crisscrossing of countless memories.

(...)

"A conversation with nature and the temporality of light/reflexes"

by Pedro Leão Neto
The series start by capturing the geometric forms and elements of some of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto´s buildings and it is clear from the start how light and reflections are the nuclear elements that are explored when responding to the edifices’ poetics and the geometries of the constructed forms. It is in the observation of the temporality of light/reflexes and in reimagining its realms within that the series offers another perspective on the FAUP spaces, one that is renewed, a perspective of a graceful understanding through the distortions and abstractions of the buildings’ structures.

(...)

Conferência "RE.VER FOTOGRAFIA E SUPORTE" - a fotografia no espaço editorial

Conferência | Conversa | Exposição
"RE.VER FOTOGRAFIA E SUPORTE" | André Príncipe, Né Santelmo e Pedro Leão Neto a fotografia no espaço editorial 

18 e 19 de Setembro 2021 | Café concerto do teatro municipal Sá de Miranda de Viana do Castelo 

Conversas 

André Príncipe

Ângela Ferreira 

Ana Catarina Pinho 

Bernardo Sousa Santos 

Céu Guarda 

Joana Mesquita Alves 

Né Santelmo 

Paulo Alegria 

Pedro Leão Neto 

Susana Lourenço Marques 

Susana Paiva 

Miguel Refresco 

Exposição 

Diogo Borges Ferreira e Miguel Teodoro 

Cinema 

Projeção de filme Traces of a diary de André Príncipe e Marco Martins com a presença de André Príncipe 

PROGRAMA DA SESSÃO

Dia 1 | 18 SET 

10H30 

Apresentação do RE.VER

11H 

Fotografia e história 

Susana Lourenço Marques 

15H 

Fotografia: formas de habitar 

The Cave Photography com 

Bernardo Sousa Santos 

Céu Guarda 

Joana Mesquita Alves 

Miguel Refresco 

16H30 

Quotidiano e narrativa 

Paulo Alegria e Susana Paiva 

18H30 

Inauguração da exposição “Margem” 

Diogo Borges Ferreira e Miguel Teodoro 

LOCAL - Espaço ao norte 

21H30 

Projeção do filme de Marco Martins e André Príncipe 

Traces of a Diary 

Com presença de André Príncipe 

LOCAL - Cinema Verde Viana 

Dia 2 | 19 SET 

11H 

A fotografia no espaço editorial 

André Príncipe - Pierre Von Kleist 

Pedro Leão Neto e Né Santelmo - scopio 

15H 

Fotografia e arquivo 

Ana Catarina Pinho - Archivo 

16H30 

Fotografia e hibridismo 

Ângela Ferreira 

Conference - Launch and exhibit of “THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES "

Fundação de Serralves © Anabela Trindade

Conference - Launch and exhibit of
“THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES "

PT/ENG

The launch and presentation of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves Museum” took place on the 8th of July and marked the beginning of the scopionewspaper journal collection focused on the photographic work developed by Mark Durden and João Leal involving a selection of architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”.

The event was attended by the photographers Mark Durden and João Leal, as well as the architect and curator António Choupina. Pedro Leão Neto, Editor-in-Chief of the scopionewspaper journal chaired the discussion on photography and architecture. The aim of the session was to explore the relationships that can be established between photographers, their artistic processes and architecture, namely Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art and Álvaro Siza. The conversation was be held in English and architect Álvaro Siza was also present and participated in the talk.

This launch was an initiative of AAI/CEAU/FAUP | scopio Editions, in collaboration with the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art Bookshop.

The session took place in the library of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art.

Lançamento e apresentação da publicação “THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES "

Conferência - Lançamento e apresentação da publicação
“THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES "

PT/ENG

Decorreu em Serralves no passado dia 8 de Julho, pelas 18h30, o lançamento e apresentação da publicação THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES " que tem como base o início da coleção da publicação scopionewspaper journal focalizada no trabalho desenvolvido pelos fotógrafos Mark Durden e João Leal envolvendo uma seleção de edifícios arquitetónicos concebidos por Álvaro Siza para a série intitulada "A Ideia de Álvaro Siza".

A mesa contou com a presença dos fotógrafos Mark Durden e João Leal, bem como do arquiteto e curador António Choupina, sendo a moderação assegurada por Pedro Leão Neto diretor da publicação scopionewspaper journal que mediou uma conversa em torno do universo da fotografia e da arquitectura. O objetivo desta sessão foi o de explorar a singularidade e o significado das relações que podem ser estabelecidas entre os fotógrafos, os seus processos artísticos e a arquitectura e ideias-chave do arquitecto, nomeadamente o Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves e Álvaro Siza. A conversa decorreu em inglês e contou com a presença e participação do arquitecto Álvaro Siza.

Este lançamento foi o resultado de uma iniciativa da AAI/CEAU/FAUP | scopio Editions, em colaboração com a Livraria do Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves.

A sessão teve lugar no espaço da biblioteca do Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves.

FBAUP divulga sessão CONTRAST - ciclo de conferências que contará com a participação de docentes e estudantes da ESMAD, FAUP e FBAUP.

Conferência | Aula
FBAUP divulga sessão CONTRAST - ciclo de conferências que contará com a participação de docentes e estudantes da ESMAD, FAUP e FBAUP.

9 de Julho de 2021, 16h00, Aula Magna

O projecto CONTRAST consiste numa rede alargada de instituições de ensino superior ligadas à formação em fotografia, que tem como principal objectivo promover o pensamento, o debate e a divulgação de actividades relacionadas com esta prática.

Uma das primeiras iniciativas deste projecto foi, precisamente, a publicação do livro CONTRAST: A Fotografia no Ensino Superior. No próximo dia 9 de Julho, às 16h00, na Aula Magna da FBAUP, dar-se-á início a um ciclo de conferências que contará com a participação de docentes e estudantes da ESMAD, FAUP e FBAUP.

PROGRAMA DA SESSÃO

9 DE JULHO
AULA MAGNA
FBAUP

16h00 — 16h15
Projecto CONTRAST
Apresentação: Pedro Leão Neto e José Carneiro

16h15 — 17h45
Apresentação dos projectos dos estudantes
Moderação: Susana Lourenço Marques

ESMAD
Bruno Fernandes (1º Ciclo — Fotografia)
Sara Cruz (1º Ciclo  — Fotografia)

FAUP
Ana Andrade (1º ciclo — F - CAAD)
Joana Mariano Santos (2º Ciclo — FACT)

FBAUP
Catarina Braga — (2º Ciclo — Artes Plásticas)
Francisco Varela — (2º Ciclo — Estudos de Arte)

17H45 — 18h30
Sessão de perguntas e respostas

Docentes
Pedro Leão Neto
José Carneiro
Susana Lourenço Marques
João Leal
Luís Filipe Ribeiro.

Lançamento e apresentação da publicação THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES by Mark Durden and João Leal

Lançamento e apresentação da publicação
THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES by Mark Durden and João Leal

Com Mark Durden, João Leal, António Choupina e Pedro Leão Neto

8 Julho | 18:30 | Biblioteca de Serralves | Museu de Arte Contemporânea

PT / ENG

O lançamento e apresentação da publicação THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES " tem como base o início da coleção da publicação scopionewspaper jornal focalizada no trabalho desenvolvido pelos fotógrafos Mark Durden e João Leal envolvendo uma seleção de edifícios arquitetónicos concebidos por Álvaro Siza para a série intitulada "A Ideia de Álvaro Siza".

A mesa contará com a presença dos fotógrafos Mark Durden e João Leal, bem como do arquiteto e curador António Choupina, sendo a moderação assegurada por Pedro Leão Neto diretor da publicação scopionewspaper journal que mediará uma conversa em torno do universo da fotografia e da arquitectura. O objetivo desta sessão será o de explorar a singularidade e o significado das relações que podem ser estabelecidas entre os fotógrafos, os seus processos artísticos e a arquitectura e ideias-chave do arquitecto, nomeadamente o Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, nomeadamente o Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves e Álvaro Siza. A conversa decorrerá em inglês e e contará com a presença do arquitecto Álvaro Siza.

Este lançamento é uma iniciativa da AAI/CEAU/FAUP | scopio Editions, em colaboração com a Livraria do Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves.
A sessão terá lugar no espaço da biblioteca do Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves.

About the session topic

The lunch and presentation of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves  Museum” will be attended by the photographers Mark Durden and João Leal who are the authors of this photography series focused on the work of Álvaro Siza, as well as by António Choupina, the architect and curator who writes the probing essay “Des Yeux Qui Ne Voint Pas” for this this series, as well as by Pedro Leão Neto the Editor-in-Chief of scopionewspaper journal that has been curating and publishing the series collection The Idea of Álvaro Siza by Mark Durden and João Leal “.

The aim is to encourage an exploratory and critical debate between the various authors involved in this curatorial, photography and editorial work around the architecture of Álvaro Siza, namely this series focused on the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. This series results from the work developed by the former two authors involving a selection of architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”, which has been accompanied by research group AAI and Pedro Leão Neto since Mark Durden and João Leal began to photograph and select Siza´s buildings for this project in Portugal.

After a concise presentation about each of the authors, Pedro Leão Neto will briefly contextualizing the work of The Idea of Álvaro Siza and then will give the word to the photographers for a statement about their photographic experience of Siza's work, based on this series focused on the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. In a second moment, the word will be given to António Choupina in order to understand how accordingly to his way of thinking as architect and curator the photography of Mark Durden and João Leal has captured essential aspects of Álvaro Siza´s work. The objective is to promote a critical debate about the world of photography and architecture, seeking to explore the singularity and significance of the relationships that can be established between the photographers and their artistic processes when communicating the architecture and key ideas of the architect, in this case The Idea of the Álvaro Siza.

About scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves Museum” by Mark Durden and João Leal

scopionewspaper is an Architecture, Art & Image Research publication with a special interest in Photography as an instrument of inquiry and expression being one of the editorial collections of scopio Editions, being the editorial responsibility of the AAI research group (Architecture, Art and Image) integrated into the R&D center of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto called CEAU (Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies).

In this number of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves Museum”, we present the photography series of Mark Durden and João Leal focused on the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, uniquely sited in the grounds of the Serralves Estate, which also comprises a Park and a Villa. This series results from the work developed by the former two authors involving a selection of architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of  Álvaro Siza”, which I have been accompanying since they began to photograph and select Siza´s buildings for this project in Portugal.

Some of the works from this series “The Idea of Álvaro Siza” have also been included in the set of case studies on Contemporary Photography Projects in Portuguese Architecture in Visual Spaces of Change (VSC), a publicly funded research projected coordinated at FAUP by the Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) group at the CEAU Research Centre. The thematic gallery of VSC where this photography project is incorporated is concerned with contemporary photography projects that combine various artistic strategies applied to the universe of architectural photography. It understands architecture as both subject and artistic matter, able to be of particular interest to a specialized public, as well as accessible to the general public through publications either in book form or online in its digital collection. The VSC research project and its galleries of diverse contemporary photography projects seeks to help advance the internationalization, dissemination and visibility of Oporto city spaces, its architecture and cultural memories. This will be achieved mainly through its online platform and diverse publications in books, catalogues and special editions, as is the case of this collection in scopionewspaper “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”.

“The Idea of Álvaro Siza” is a Contemporary Photography project that recognises architecture as both subject and artistic matter and explores a visual strategy that moves away from traditional mainstream architectural photography. In this series Mark Durden and Joáo Leal are seeking to expand the comprehension of architecture by investigating photography’s capacity as a unique form of expression able to create an architectural promenade in which the images move between documentary and poetical depictions. Through their series, the viewer is able to sense both the magical experience that Siza’s architectural spaces produce for us and how light and nature interplay within those spaces. Furthermore, their photographs reveal how Siza’s spatial forms relate with the context, offering a deeper understanding of the architect’s oeuvre.

We have the honour to have as invited author for this number of scopionewspaper journal the architect and curator António Choupina who writes the probing essay “Des Yeux Qui Ne Voint Pas” about Mark Durden and João Leal´s series “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves Museum”.

Editorial and Advisory Board
Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) research group Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

ISBN: 978-989-54878-2-0

ISSN: 2183-6906

Critical essays

“Des Yeux Qui Ne Voint Pas”

by António Choupina

I must confess that – due to a broken foot – my enchantment with nature was somewhat faded. Staring at these photographs became an almost cathartic experience, serenity washing over in a dream, renewing a passion for the universe that created architecture and that, in turn, is recreated by it. If the Boa Nova Tea House were like Saramago’s stone raft, adrift in a vast ocean, then the Serralves Museum would be like one of Cesário Verde’s bucolic poems, bathed in idyllic foliage. From the very first page, one discovers the building romantically dressed in seasonal vegetation, enveloped in a curtain of greenery, which drapes leaves as floating water lilies and droplets of rain. Distant windows seem to emerge beyond the sumptuous filter, manipulating a type of picturesque nostalgia: the primitive longing for a Garden of Eden or the simple magic of a child playing outside. Having planted an oak tree in Serralves, this interpretation might be biased by my own boyish recollections or, perhaps, the landscape architect was just prone to episodes of refined apophenia. João Gomes da Silva was invited by Álvaro Siza to help mediate the relationship with Jacques Gréber’s 1932 designs, supposedly inspired by the geometries of Versailles. When Siza’s Alhambra project was exhibited here, in 2017, I pointed out that Gréber’s octagons and waterlines were connected to Granada – like those of Luis Barragán or Louis Kahn. In fact, all of Serralves can be viewed as a modern-day Alhambra and not because of its embellished gardens, protected by a stone wall, but because of its sequencing of spaces, of light and shade.

(...)


"The phonomenology and identity of the bond between architecture and nature"

by Pedro Leão Neto

Mark Durden and João Leal’s photography series at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art constitute an aesthetic endeavour that reveals some of the Siza’s most significant traits. The Serralves is an architecture that affords a home to other arts, often allowing the exhibited art to be displayed in oneness with the place and not presented as isolated artefacts, as occurs, for example, with Pedro Cabrita Reis’s sculptures, which have established a strong connection with the exhibition spaces. Mark and João’s series create a visual narrative that brings together Serralves’ abstraction and poetics, as well as underscoring the significant relationship that the museum creates with the natural surroundings of the park1. Álvaro Siza has explained that the museum’s vision required him to create a design with the least possible impact on the surrounding urban setting and to avoid disrupting the gardens of the park and the Villa.

(...)

Biographies

Mark Durden
Mark Durden is a writer and artist. He studied Fine Art at Exeter College of Art and Design and at Glasgow School of Art, going on to study History and Theory of Art at University of Kent at Canterbury— attaining an MA by research for a thesis on Roland Barthes and a PhD on Photography and the Book. He has taught both Art History and Fine Art at Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury and at Staffordshire University. He taught History of Photography at University of Derby where he became Reader in 2002 and Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) in Photography in 2003. He left Derby in 2007 to join Newport School of Art and Design (now University of South Wales - USW) as Professor of Photography. He has published extensively on photography and contemporary art and since 1997 has worked as part of the artists’ group Common Culture. In collaboration with João Leal, he began photographing Siza’s architecture in Porto in 2017.

João Leal
Practitioner and teacher. Participates in solo and group exhibitions since 2001. His artworks use still and moving images as well as sound and they are presented in exhibition, projection and installation formats. His main interests as a practitioner are the ideas of structure (and its multiple connotations), the “proximity/distance” dichotomy and the ways of occupying the exhibition space. In 2005 won, ex-aequo, the "Pedro Miguel Frade" award, from the Portuguese Centre of Photography, with the work "Night Order”. In 2018 won the aquisition award of the XX Cerveira Biennale. PhD in Visual Arts (practice based in instalation, photography and videoart) from the University of South Wales (supervised by Mark Durden and Lisa Barnard) in connection with the European Centre for Documentary Research. Has a degree in Audiovisual Communication Technology at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, majoring in Photography. Worked in São João and D.Maria II National Theatres, RTP Portuguese television, and “Casa da Música”. Full time professor in the Department of Image Arts P.Porto | ESMAD and member of the UNIMAD research unit.

António Choupina
António Choupina is an architect from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, he founded the atelier CH.A (CHoupina.Arquitectos) in 2010, the year in which he collaborates with the School of Arts and Design. He is responsible for interventions at the Palacio de Carlos V in Granada and at the Sverre Fehn Pavilion during the Official Visit of the Presidency of the Republic to Norway. He has recently accompanied the construction of the  lvaro Siza Pavilion at the China International Furniture Fair, with whom he has developed several cultural projects, in partnership with Aedes Berlin, the Vitra Design Museum and the Aga Khan Network. As curator, he has curated exhibitions at the Serralves Museum, the Nadir Afonso Museum, the Alfaro Foundation, the Tchoban Foundation or the Marques da Silva Foundation, producing multiple publications on the frontier of architecture, art and philosophy. He is the editor of A As Architecture Network, a jury of international awards and guest speaker at several institutions and events, such as Bauhaus100 and the International Architecture Design Forum.

Pedro Leão Neto
Pedro Leão Neto is a researcher and assistant professor at FAUP since 2007 in the area of Architecture Communication and Photography he is the head of the courses “Computer Architecture Aided Design” (CAAD) and “Photography of Architecture, City and Territory” (FACT). He is the coordinator of the research group Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) integrated in FAUP s R&D centre, director of the cultural association Cityscopio and the founder and editorial coordinator of scopio Editions and its open platform scopionetwork, which is a AAI s research-based editorial project focused on Contemporary Photography related with Architecture, City and Territory. He has curated several architectural photography exhibitions in Portugal and abroad, workshops and international debates and seminars around the universe of Architecture, Art and Image, being the founder and coordinator of international conferences as On the Surface: Photography on Architecture, which last edition was held at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon (2018) in the form of Sophia Journal s annual international conferences around the theme and topics in focus in Sophia for each year. He is the author and editor of more than 30 books and the coordinator and Principal researcher (PR) of several national and international projects public funded, and he is currently the coordinator of “Visual spaces of Change” financed by the Portuguese public agency - FCT.

Release and presentation of the publication - THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES by Mark Durden and João Leal

Release and presentation of the publication THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES by Mark Durden and João Leal

With Mark Durden, João Leal, António Choupina AND Pedro Leão Neto

8th July | 18:30 | Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art Library

ENG / PT

The launch and presentation of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves  Museum” marks the beginning of the scopionewspaper journal collection focused on the photographic work developed by Mark Durden and João Leal involving a selection of architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”.

The event will be attended by the photographers Mark Durden and João Leal, as well as the architect and curator António Choupina. Pedro Leão Neto, Editor-in-Chief of the scopionewspaper journal will chair this discussion on photography and architecture. The aim of the session will be to explore the relationships that can be established between photographers, their artistic processes and architecture, namely Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art and Álvaro Siza. The conversation will be held in English and will be attended by the architect Álvaro Siza.

This launch is an initiative of AAI/CEAU/FAUP | scopio Editions, in collaboration with the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art Bookshop.

The session will take place in the library of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art.

About the session topic

The lunch and presentation of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves  Museum” will be attended by the photographers Mark Durden and João Leal who are the authors of this photography series focused on the work of Álvaro Siza, as well as by António Choupina, the architect and curator who writes the probing essay “Des Yeux Qui Ne Voint Pas” for this this series, as well as by Pedro Leão Neto the Editor-in-Chief of scopionewspaper journal that has been curating and publishing the series collection The Idea of Álvaro Siza by Mark Durden and João Leal “.

The aim is to encourage an exploratory and critical debate between the various authors involved in this curatorial, photography and editorial work around the architecture of Álvaro Siza, namely this series focused on the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. This series results from the work developed by the former two authors involving a selection of architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”, which has been accompanied by research group AAI and Pedro Leão Neto since Mark Durden and João Leal began to photograph and select Siza´s buildings for this project in Portugal.

After a concise presentation about each of the authors, Pedro Leão Neto will briefly contextualizing the work of The Idea of Álvaro Siza and then will give the word to the photographers for a statement about their photographic experience of Siza's work, based on this series focused on the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. In a second moment, the word will be given to António Choupina in order to understand how accordingly to his way of thinking as architect and curator the photography of Mark Durden and João Leal has captured essential aspects of Álvaro Siza´s work. The objective is to promote a critical debate about the world of photography and architecture, seeking to explore the singularity and significance of the relationships that can be established between the photographers and their artistic processes when communicating the architecture and key ideas of the architect, in this case The Idea of the Álvaro Siza.

About scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves Museum” by Mark Durden and João Leal

scopionewspaper is an Architecture, Art & Image Research publication with a special interest in Photography as an instrument of inquiry and expression being one of the editorial collections of scopio Editions, being the editorial responsibility of the AAI research group (Architecture, Art and Image) integrated into the R&D center of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto called CEAU (Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies).

In this number of scopionewspaper journal “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves Museum”, we present the photography series of Mark Durden and João Leal focused on the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, uniquely sited in the grounds of the Serralves Estate, which also comprises a Park and a Villa. This series results from the work developed by the former two authors involving a selection of architectural buildings designed by Álvaro Siza for the series entitled “The Idea of  Álvaro Siza”, which I have been accompanying since they began to photograph and select Siza´s buildings for this project in Portugal.

Some of the works from this series “The Idea of Álvaro Siza” have also been included in the set of case studies on Contemporary Photography Projects in Portuguese Architecture in Visual Spaces of Change (VSC), a publicly funded research projected coordinated at FAUP by the Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) group at the CEAU Research Centre. The thematic gallery of VSC where this photography project is incorporated is concerned with contemporary photography projects that combine various artistic strategies applied to the universe of architectural photography. It understands architecture as both subject and artistic matter, able to be of particular interest to a specialized public, as well as accessible to the general public through publications either in book form or online in its digital collection. The VSC research project and its galleries of diverse contemporary photography projects seeks to help advance the internationalization, dissemination and visibility of Oporto city spaces, its architecture and cultural memories. This will be achieved mainly through its online platform and diverse publications in books, catalogues and special editions, as is the case of this collection in scopionewspaper “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”.

“The Idea of Álvaro Siza” is a Contemporary Photography project that recognises architecture as both subject and artistic matter and explores a visual strategy that moves away from traditional mainstream architectural photography. In this series Mark Durden and Joáo Leal are seeking to expand the comprehension of architecture by investigating photography’s capacity as a unique form of expression able to create an architectural promenade in which the images move between documentary and poetical depictions. Through their series, the viewer is able to sense both the magical experience that Siza’s architectural spaces produce for us and how light and nature interplay within those spaces. Furthermore, their photographs reveal how Siza’s spatial forms relate with the context, offering a deeper understanding of the architect’s oeuvre.

We have the honour to have as invited author for this number of scopionewspaper journal the architect and curator António Choupina who writes the probing essay “Des Yeux Qui Ne Voint Pas” about Mark Durden and João Leal´s series “The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Serralves Museum”.

Editorial and Advisory Board
Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) research group Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

ISBN: 978-989-54878-2-0

ISSN: 2183-6906

Critical essays

“Des Yeux Qui Ne Voint Pas”

by António Choupina

I must confess that – due to a broken foot – my enchantment with nature was somewhat faded. Staring at these photographs became an almost cathartic experience, serenity washing over in a dream, renewing a passion for the universe that created architecture and that, in turn, is recreated by it. If the Boa Nova Tea House were like Saramago’s stone raft, adrift in a vast ocean, then the Serralves Museum would be like one of Cesário Verde’s bucolic poems, bathed in idyllic foliage. From the very first page, one discovers the building romantically dressed in seasonal vegetation, enveloped in a curtain of greenery, which drapes leaves as floating water lilies and droplets of rain. Distant windows seem to emerge beyond the sumptuous filter, manipulating a type of picturesque nostalgia: the primitive longing for a Garden of Eden or the simple magic of a child playing outside. Having planted an oak tree in Serralves, this interpretation might be biased by my own boyish recollections or, perhaps, the landscape architect was just prone to episodes of refined apophenia. João Gomes da Silva was invited by Álvaro Siza to help mediate the relationship with Jacques Gréber’s 1932 designs, supposedly inspired by the geometries of Versailles. When Siza’s Alhambra project was exhibited here, in 2017, I pointed out that Gréber’s octagons and waterlines were connected to Granada – like those of Luis Barragán or Louis Kahn. In fact, all of Serralves can be viewed as a modern-day Alhambra and not because of its embellished gardens, protected by a stone wall, but because of its sequencing of spaces, of light and shade.

(...)


"The phonomenology and identity of the bond between architecture and nature"

by Pedro Leão Neto

Mark Durden and João Leal’s photography series at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art constitute an aesthetic endeavour that reveals some of the Siza’s most significant traits. The Serralves is an architecture that affords a home to other arts, often allowing the exhibited art to be displayed in oneness with the place and not presented as isolated artefacts, as occurs, for example, with Pedro Cabrita Reis’s sculptures, which have established a strong connection with the exhibition spaces. Mark and João’s series create a visual narrative that brings together Serralves’ abstraction and poetics, as well as underscoring the significant relationship that the museum creates with the natural surroundings of the park1. Álvaro Siza has explained that the museum’s vision required him to create a design with the least possible impact on the surrounding urban setting and to avoid disrupting the gardens of the park and the Villa.

(...)

Biographies

Mark Durden
Mark Durden is a writer and artist. He studied Fine Art at Exeter College of Art and Design and at Glasgow School of Art, going on to study History and Theory of Art at University of Kent at Canterbury— attaining an MA by research for a thesis on Roland Barthes and a PhD on Photography and the Book. He has taught both Art History and Fine Art at Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury and at Staffordshire University. He taught History of Photography at University of Derby where he became Reader in 2002 and Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) in Photography in 2003. He left Derby in 2007 to join Newport School of Art and Design (now University of South Wales - USW) as Professor of Photography. He has published extensively on photography and contemporary art and since 1997 has worked as part of the artists’ group Common Culture. In collaboration with João Leal, he began photographing Siza’s architecture in Porto in 2017.

João Leal
Practitioner and teacher. Participates in solo and group exhibitions since 2001. His artworks use still and moving images as well as sound and they are presented in exhibition, projection and installation formats. His main interests as a practitioner are the ideas of structure (and its multiple connotations), the “proximity/distance” dichotomy and the ways of occupying the exhibition space. In 2005 won, ex-aequo, the "Pedro Miguel Frade" award, from the Portuguese Centre of Photography, with the work "Night Order”. In 2018 won the aquisition award of the XX Cerveira Biennale. PhD in Visual Arts (practice based in instalation, photography and videoart) from the University of South Wales (supervised by Mark Durden and Lisa Barnard) in connection with the European Centre for Documentary Research. Has a degree in Audiovisual Communication Technology at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, majoring in Photography. Worked in São João and D.Maria II National Theatres, RTP Portuguese television, and “Casa da Música”. Full time professor in the Department of Image Arts P.Porto | ESMAD and member of the UNIMAD research unit.

António Choupina
António Choupina is an architect from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, he founded the atelier CH.A (CHoupina.Arquitectos) in 2010, the year in which he collaborates with the School of Arts and Design. He is responsible for interventions at the Palacio de Carlos V in Granada and at the Sverre Fehn Pavilion during the Official Visit of the Presidency of the Republic to Norway. He has recently accompanied the construction of the  lvaro Siza Pavilion at the China International Furniture Fair, with whom he has developed several cultural projects, in partnership with Aedes Berlin, the Vitra Design Museum and the Aga Khan Network. As curator, he has curated exhibitions at the Serralves Museum, the Nadir Afonso Museum, the Alfaro Foundation, the Tchoban Foundation or the Marques da Silva Foundation, producing multiple publications on the frontier of architecture, art and philosophy. He is the editor of A As Architecture Network, a jury of international awards and guest speaker at several institutions and events, such as Bauhaus100 and the International Architecture Design Forum.

Pedro Leão Neto
Pedro Leão Neto is a researcher and assistant professor at FAUP since 2007 in the area of Architecture Communication and Photography he is the head of the courses “Computer Architecture Aided Design” (CAAD) and “Photography of Architecture, City and Territory” (FACT). He is the coordinator of the research group Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) integrated in FAUP s R&D centre, director of the cultural association Cityscopio and the founder and editorial coordinator of scopio Editions and its open platform scopionetwork, which is a AAI s research-based editorial project focused on Contemporary Photography related with Architecture, City and Territory. He has curated several architectural photography exhibitions in Portugal and abroad, workshops and international debates and seminars around the universe of Architecture, Art and Image, being the founder and coordinator of international conferences as On the Surface: Photography on Architecture, which last edition was held at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon (2018) in the form of Sophia Journal s annual international conferences around the theme and topics in focus in Sophia for each year. He is the author and editor of more than 30 books and the coordinator and Principal researcher (PR) of several national and international projects public funded, and he is currently the coordinator of “Visual spaces of Change” financed by the Portuguese public agency - FCT.

International Conference - 6th number of Sophia Journal - Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations (Copy)

Video recording of International Conference

Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of
environmental transformations

Took place on the 21 - 22 May 2021 | FAUP

MORNING SESSION – 21 MAY - OPENING SESSION | PANEL #1

AFTERNOON SESSION – 21 MAY - PANEL #2 | PANEL #3

MORNING SESSION | 22 MAY - PANEL #4

The conference was recorded in youtube streamline

FAUP Conference Room CCR0.1, access only for the organising team
Exhibition at FAUP, Galeria de Exposições

scopio Facebook

Abstract

The International Conference for SOPHIA #6 took place at the Faculty of Architecture of University of Porto (FAUP), continuing the annual cycle of international forums on a specific theme.
Sophia Journal´s International Conference presented a live and video conference programme organized by CEAU / FAUP in partnership with other institutions and the event will be held online and access to the Conference Room will only be possible to the organising team.
Encompassing a rich and diverse programme around: (i) roundtables for each panel concerning a focused topic coming from Sophia´s comprehensive call; (ii) presentation of articles submitted; (iii) the opening of Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations exhibition using the VSC Mobile Projector.
The contents of the exhibition will also be online soon and the exhibition experience was registered purely for research purposes, being analysed in the context of the ongoing Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations articles and research.
The global objective of these international forums is to promote the reflection and debate on the universes of architecture, art and image, addressing various issues transversal to the worlds of photography and architecture, exploring how the image can be a means to cross borders and shift boundaries between different disciplinary areas.

Programme

The programme of Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations comprised a set of roundtables on which it was possible to address and debate the following issues:

·      How do we all become aware of the gradual, but inescapable changes in the environment?

·      How does photography raise public awareness of the pressing environmental changes implicit in our anthropocentric epoch?

·      How can photography contribute to these complex debates?

These issues can be addressed from several perspectives: from confronting our memories and understandings of a place to reactivating ‘what is no longer there’ or proposing ‘what could be there’.
The objective is to challenge our understanding on how contemporary photography can be explored as a meaningful instrument of research about today processes of urban change and architectural spaces, producing visual synthesis about how architectures, places and spaces are used and lived, rendering visible aspects which are difficult to perceive without the purposeful use of image and photography.
We believe that this conference will make significant contributions to these discussions, including the material processes of creating, managing and interpreting sets of documents. We are interested in material processes where photography is explored as a significant research tool for critical and innovative views on architecture and urban transformation in their expanded fields and contextualized by larger systems: cultural, political, artistic, technical, and historical dimensions.

The 4 roundtables of the conference´s global theme - photographic documentation of environmental transformations - were held online on the 21 and 22 of May 2021 hosted by the organising team at room CCR0.1 – FAUP – and will cover the following topics:

Photographing the altered identity of landscapes

There is a challenge when using photography as both an inquiry tool and artistic form of expression for representing landscapes, which entails uncovering their physical, cultural, social and political marks as well as their identity, their perceived uniqueness as places. Landscapes are territories transformed by human action and, as such, they reveal the understanding and values of past and present societies and how we are transforming the environment. According to Lefebvre (La production de l’espace, 1974), one of the ways of conditioning social reproduction occurs through the economic and political restriction of a group accessing space, thus it is vital to call our attention to how landscapes are being significantly transformed, conditioned and controlled. How can we understand landscapes and their identity in the contemporary transformation processes resulting from the dynamics of change and disrupting habits of our societies?

Photographic narratives of urban transformations 

Time, space, scale and movement are essential aspects of visual data production. Significant changes in cities’ flows can transpire in just a few minutes, hours or days, span several years or even decades. A diachronic study of an urban environment could concentrate on the repetitive patterns of many activities and phenomena that occur during a day or focus on transformations over much more extensive periods of time. Several photographic methods explicitly focus on sequentially researching social change and cultural expressions as they develop, over time in a particular space. Yet, art-based communication approaches express insights in more experimental ways, from ‘visual essays’ to digital storytelling, photo-novels, sometimes using pre-existing images, and even non-photographic ones. Boosted by new media technologies and networking opportunities, they are powerful contemporary vehicles for voicing and visualizing our reflections, ideas, arguments, experiences, and observations upon change, from manifestos to critical reviews, or just compelling stories.

Digital spectacle and its impact on architecture and the architectural image

As some argue that architecture is too slow for the digital revolution1, the resurrection of the collage, appeared as a viable strategy to critically reclaim architecture's place: one that, unlike simulations of binary realities, was to be a raw and ambiguous like an ‘open project’, even if computer simulated.  Due to its success, the collage has been taken over by the market for its ‘arresting novelty’. As a commodity, it compensates for architecture's slow pace: faster to produce and consume, less related to the disciplinary process of the conception, more evocative and less ideological.  To some, the ‘collage era’ represents the return of a richer, stronger profession2  while some claim they are blank postcards of a post-idealistic age, one where built quality rarely holds up. At a time when the true cost of globalization, consumption and constant growth is under discussion, should architecture embrace speed or is there the need for a counter-model? 

Photographic documentation of environmental transformations: Visual Essay

We have invited two authors and their visual essays that address the issue of photographic documentation of environmental transformation from different perspectives and visual constructs. On the one hand, to challenge our understanding on how contemporary photography can be explored as a meaningful instrument of research about today processes of urban change and architectural spaces. On the other hand, to discuss the material processes where photography is explored as a significant research tool for critical and innovative views on architecture and urban transformation.

Keynote Lecture: Epics of the Everyday
The keynote lecture will look at the historic and ongoing relationship between documentary photography and architecture through the lens of the ever-changing notion of realism.

Opening Session, Invited Speakers and Moderators

This edition of the International Conference Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations for this 6th number of Sophia Journal brings together a diverse group of researchers, architects, visual artists, and curators of international relevance, in an exercise of joint reflexivity about photographic documentation of environmental transformation from different perspectives and visual constructs. The talks held at this conference will allow the introduction of a number of issues that are not necessarily foreseen in the initial programme of the conference, enabling an active dialogue between researchers, authors and the public, contributing to the identification of new avenues of research and artistic expression related to how photography can be explored as a meaningful instrument of research about today processes of urban change and architectural spaces.

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

21 MAY 2021

09:30           OPENING SESSION

                         João Pedro Xavier (Director of FAUP)
Pedro Leão Neto - Wilfried Wang  

10:00            PANEL #1
                         Chairs / moderators: Carolina Leite + Carlos Machado e Moura

                        Presentation: Digital spectacle and its impact on architecture and the architectural image (CL)

                          Presentation: Photographic narratives of urban transformations (CMM) 

10:30 (44)     Vítor Alves: Copy/Paste: for today we save JPEG’s and browse PNG’s

10:45 (13)       Marcin Piekałkiewicz: Production of space in the photographic work of Naoya Hatakeyama

11:00 (06)      Giuseppe Resta: Landscape transformations in Albania. A photographic survey on the traces of Italian travellers in the Balkans

11:15 (24)       Luciano Bernardino da Costa: Verticalization: Photographic Explorations of Complex Urban Phenomena 

11:30 (35)      Jazmin Charalambous: How can photography reveal the effects of corporatisation on public spaces in London, and further, how can it contribute
to the creation of proposals that intervene in this process? (Wembley Park)

11:45 - 12:30   ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION #1

12:30 - 14:00  LUNCH BREAK

14:00               KEYNOTE LECTURE

                         Jesus Vassallo

                         Epics in the Everyday

14:45                PANEL #2

                         Chair / moderator – Carlos Machado e Moura  

15:00 (20)       Paulo Catrica, Rui Mendes: Models, Plans, Clusters & Pine Trees: Vila Nova de Santo André 1971-2021              

15:15 (40)        Haode Sun, Visual Misalignment: Faster Modernity and Slower Modernity: Photographic Documentation of Contemporary Urban Transformation
in Shanghai

15:30 (14)        Beatriz Duarte: Experimental persistence of change: a collage of palimpsestic temporalities of the Thermoelectric Power Station of Freixo
(Campanhã, Porto)       

15:45 (29)        Chloé Darmon: Archiving the abandoned washhouses of Oporto following the paths of washerwomen: a history of a women’s practice in the
modern urban space

16:00 - 16:30   ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION #2

16:30 - 16:35   BREAK

16:35                PANEL #3
                        Chair / moderator – Jorge Marum

                         Presentation: Photographing the altered identity of landscapes

16:50 (04)        Alla Lafonina, Vera Laponkina: Sacred place

17:05 (12)         Luca Donner, Francesca Sorcinelli: Replacing urban identity: the disappearance of Sha’biya Al Safa Neighbourhood

17:20 (45)        Yara A. Khalf, Ahmed El Antably, Mona A. Abdelwahab: A Walk Through Urban Decay: Is Al-Hattaba Worth Saving?

17:35 (19)         Ana Roberti, Helena Santos, Daniel Brandão, From intimacy to urban landscape: images of the transformations of the Rainha Dona Leonor social
housing

17:50 (28)        Gil Mualem-Doron, Present Absentees

18:05 - 18:40   ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION #3

22 MAY 2021

11:00                ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION #4

                        Chair / moderator – Wilfried Wang

                        Photographic documentation of environmental transformations: Visual Essay

                         Inaki Bergera

                         Pedro Leão Neto

12:30               CLOSING SESSION

ORGANIZATION

EXECUTIVE COMMITEE 
Pedro Leão Neto (FAUP) - Wilfried Wang (UTSoA)

PROGRAMMING

Carolina Leite (CEAU / FAUP)
Carlos Machado e Moura (CEAU / FAUP)
Jorge Marum (CIAUD-UBI)
Leonor Matos Silva (Dinâmia’CET, ISCTE-IUL)
Maria Neto (CEAU / FAUP - UBI)
Pedro Leão Neto (CEAU / FAUP)
Wilfried Wang (UTSoA)

ORGANISATION AND PRODUCTION
Miguel Santos (AAI / FAUP / VSC)
Sara Mota (scopio Editions)
Frederico Martinho (AAI / FAUP / VSC)

COMMUNICATION
FAUP / CEAU and Sophia Journal / scopio Editions

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Álvaro Domingues (FAUP/ CEAU)
Ana Janeiro
Andreia Oliveira
Eduarda Neves (ESAP)
Fernando Zaparaín (GIR UVa | ESPACIAR)
Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro (FBAUP / i2ADS)
Gisela Lameira (FAUP/ CEAU)
Isa Clara Neves (CES / CEAU / FAUP)
Iñaki Bergera (Arquitectura / UNIZAR)
João Carlos Ferreira (UFP - AAI / CEAU / FAUP)
Jorge Marum (UBI - AAI / CEAU)
José Alberto Lage (FAUP/ CEAU)
José Carneiro (FBAUP / i2ADS)
José Maças de Carvalho (DARQ)
José Manuel Barbosa (FAUP / FBAUP / i2ADS)
Jorge Jular (GIR UVa | ESPACIAR)
Margarida Medeiros (FCSH)
Mário Mesquita (FAUP / FBAUP / i2ADS)
Mark Durden (USW / eCDR)
Miguel Leal (FBAUP / i2ADS)
Olívia da Silva (P.PORTO / ESMAD)
Rui Lourosa (ESAP)
Susana Lourenço Marques (FBAUP / i2ADS)
Susana Ventura (FAUP / CEAU)
Teresa Ferreira (FAUP/ CEAU)
Victor dos Reis (FBAUL)


CONFERENCE TEAM
Carolina Leite (CEAU / FAUP)
Carlos Machado e Moura (CEAU / FAUP)
Jorge Marum (CIAUD-UBI)
Leonor Matos Silva (Dinâmia’CET, ISCTE-IUL)
Maria Neto (CEAU / FAUP - UBI)
Pedro Leão Neto (CEAU / FAUP)
Wilfried Wang (UTSoA)

Frederico Martinho (AAI / FAUP / VSC)
João Carlos Ferreira (UFP - AAI / CEAU / FAUP)
Miguel Santos (AAI / CEAU / FAUP)
Sara Lino (scopio Edition)

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Né Santelmo

PRINT AND WEBDESIGN
Sara Lino (scopio Edition)

EXIBITION PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECTS 
Curated by Visual Spaces of Change

Frederico Martinho (AAI / FAUP / VSC)
Miguel Santos (AAI / FAUP / VSC)
Sara Mota (scopio Editions)

The conference will be conducted in English.

Support for dissemination: U. Porto - Common House. | Marques da Silva Foundation and Northern Regional Section of the Order of Architects (OASRN).

Terramaia #3 já disponível ao público

Terramaia #3 já disponível ao público

O terceiro número da Terramaia debruça-se sobre o universo do trabalho, falando sobre esta temática tão importante que afeta diversas dimensões da vida no planeta e interfere em domínios tão significativos do Ordenamento Territorial como os do planeamento, o ambiente, a mobilidade e transportes, a cultura e a participação cívica.
É uma publicação da Câmara Municipal da Maia enquadrada pelos seus Pelouros do Planeamento Territorial e da Cultura e destina-se não só a todos os especialistas na temática, mas também ao público em geral, assumindo um propósito científico-pedagógico.

A publicação Terramaia é um projeto editorial do Munícipio da Maia no qual a equipa da scopio Editions participa e que pretende constituir um espaço de informação abrangente ligado ao universo do ordenamento territorial. Há objetivos nesta revista Terramaia que cruzam áreas de interesse do projeto scopio, nomeadamente a vontade em oferecer uma visão rica e integral sobre o universo do planeamento e projeto do ambiente urbano, capaz de interessar diversos públicos e a sociedade civil. Na verdade, existe em terramaia uma preocupação significativa em informar de forma clara e pedagógica sobre as diversas áreas do saber que integram o exercício do ordenamento territorial e promover uma reflexão coletiva sobre essas mesmas áreas e temáticas: do urbanismo, da arquitectura, da participação pública, da cultura, da arte e de outras mais.

A scopio tem como missão alargada reforçar a ligação entre a Universidade e a sociedade civil, com particular ênfase na transferência de conhecimento interdisciplinar nos campos da arquitectura, arte e imagem, integrando este conhecimento em diversas formas de investigação e intervenção no espaço público que visam potenciar a construção de cidadania. Neste contexto, o nosso meio privilegiado de ação é o das publicações e editorial com enfoque nas temáticas da Arquitectura, Arte e Imagem (AAI), nomeadamente o da Fotografia Documental e Artística relacionada com Arquitectura, Cidade e Território. Por todas estas razões acreditamos que Terramaia vem preencher um espaço de grande importância para o Município e não só, nomeadamente como um fórum editorial capaz de promover uma reflexão importante sobre o território e oferecer um entendimento da arquitetura abrangente como uma prática e disciplina capaz de integrar os domínios social, económico, político, histórico e técnico.

Convidamos, assim, os leitores a conhecer as ideias e temáticas dos diversos artigos deste número de Terramaia #3

FBAUP anuncia o projecto CONTRAST: Projeto CONTRAST recebe luz verde da DGARTES

FBAUP anuncia o projecto CONTRAST: Projeto CONTRAST recebe luz verde da DGARTES

Liderado pelo grupo de investigação AAI-CEAU-FAUP, CONTRAST é um parceria com a ESMAD-uniMAD e o i2ads-FBAUP.
O projeto visa a dinamização cultural interdisciplinar e é focado na criação duma rede de iniciativas artísticas e reflexão crítica incentivando o debate sobre temas transversais à Arte, Arquitectura e Design através do mundo da Criação, do Editorial, e do Ensino da Fotografia em diversas áreas disciplinares, reforçando a oferta artística e editorial, o acesso e participação nas artes.

Esta rede conta com a parceria estabelecida em diversas áreas científicas e artísticas, entre nove escolas de ensino da fotografia em Portugal: ARCO - Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual; DARQ - Departamento de Arquitectura da Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra; DCAM - Departamento de Cinema e Artes dos Media: Escola de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação - Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias Lisboa; ESAP - Escola Superior Artística do Porto; ESMAD | Escola Superior De Media, Artes e Design, Vila Do Conde; FAUP- Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto; FBAUL - Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa; FBAUP Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto; IPT - Instituto Politécnico de Tomar e três escolas fora de Portugal: Liverpool School of Architecture (LSA), Zaragosa Unidad Predepartamental de Arquitectura da Universidade de Zaragoza (UNIZAR) e Barcelona Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya BarcelonaTech (UPC).

O projeto conta já com a edição da publicação Contrast: A fotografia no ensino superior.

Um dos seus principais intuitos é o de reunir um conjunto diversificado de textos de reflexão e análise crítica, sobre projetos fotográficos realizados em contexto de ensino e investigação, representativos das principais instituições do ensino superior português ligadas à docência da fotografia e integrando também unidades curriculares em que a fotografia surge no âmbito de outras áreas disciplinares como, por exemplo Arquitectura, Design e Multimedia e Estudos Artísticos, entre outras.

Kenneth Frampton - Reflections on the predicament of architecture: seven points in retrospect

Robert Maxwell Memorial Lectures
Kenneth Frampton - Reflections on the predicament of architecture: seven points in retrospect

Thursday 22 April 2021 6pm BST (1pmEDT)

Introduction

Soumyen Bandyopadhyay (University of Liverpool)

Mark Swenarton (University of Liverpool)

Lecture

Kenneth Frampton (Columbia University)

Conclusion

Marco Iuliano (University of Liverpool)

KennethFrampton’s presentation will advance a critique of the current malaise in architectural education and of the equally debilitating state of contemporary practice. These aspects are evident in the current postmodern tendency to reduce architecture either to design of spectacular sculpture at a gargantuan scale or to the application of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology in order to favour the maximization of profit. Both of these Neoliberal impulses have deprived modern architecture of its former ameliorative character, namely, the formulation of the building task in a socio-ethical and spatially innovative manner. The lecture will attempt to trace the subtle ideological shifts and the changes in nomenclature that have accompanied our currently unsustainable degradation of the megalopolitan environment.

The event will take place via Zoom

Registration required: please click here to reserve a place

University of Liverpool School of Architecture

International Conference - 6th number of Sophia Journal - Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations

International Conference - 6th number of Sophia Journal - Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations

FAUP 21 - 22 May 2021 | FAUP

21 May: 9:30 - 13:00 | 14:00

22 May: 11:00 - 13:00 | 13:00

The conference is schedule in Western European Summer Time (Lisbon) and will be held in English
Available via Zoom (Colibri)
https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/88158413737?pwd=a29QS1M5UnV1VzdEVlIzeUpBcmZJQT09
Password: 992502

FAUP Conference Room CCR0.1, access only for the organising team
Exhibition at FAUP, Galeria de Exposições

Abstract

The International Conference for SOPHIA #6 will take place at the Faculty of Architecture of University of Porto (FAUP), continuing the annual cycle of international forums on a specific theme.
Sophia Journal´s International Conference will present a live and video conference programme organized by CEAU / FAUP in partnership with other institutions and the event will be held online and access to the Conference Room will only be possible to the organising team.
Encompassing a rich and diverse programme around: (i) roundtables for each panel concerning a focused topic coming from Sophia´s comprehensive call; (ii) presentation of articles submitted; (iii) the opening of Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations exhibition using the VSC Mobile Projector.
The contents of the exhibition will also be online and the exhibition experience is registered purely for research purposes, being analysed in the context of the ongoing Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations articles and research.
The global objective of these international forums is to promote the reflection and debate on the universes of architecture, art and image, addressing various issues transversal to the worlds of photography and architecture, exploring how the image can be a means to cross borders and shift boundaries between different disciplinary areas.

Programme

The programme of Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations comprises a set of roundtables on which it will be possible to address and debate the following issues:

·      How do we all become aware of the gradual, but inescapable changes in the environment?

·      How does photography raise public awareness of the pressing environmental changes implicit in our anthropocentric epoch?

·      How can photography contribute to these complex debates?

These issues can be addressed from several perspectives: from confronting our memories and understandings of a place to reactivating ‘what is no longer there’ or proposing ‘what could be there’.
The objective is to challenge our understanding on how contemporary photography can be explored as a meaningful instrument of research about today processes of urban change and architectural spaces, producing visual synthesis about how architectures, places and spaces are used and lived, rendering visible aspects which are difficult to perceive without the purposeful use of image and photography.
We believe that this conference will make significant contributions to these discussions, including the material processes of creating, managing and interpreting sets of documents. We are interested in material processes where photography is explored as a significant research tool for critical and innovative views on architecture and urban transformation in their expanded fields and contextualized by larger systems: cultural, political, artistic, technical, and historical dimensions.

The 4 roundtables of the conference´s global theme - photographic documentation of environmental transformations - will be held online on the 21 and 22 of May 2021 hosted by the organising team at room CCR0.1 – FAUP – and will cover the following topics:

Photographing the altered identity of landscapes

There is a challenge when using photography as both an inquiry tool and artistic form of expression for representing landscapes, which entails uncovering their physical, cultural, social and political marks as well as their identity, their perceived uniqueness as places. Landscapes are territories transformed by human action and, as such, they reveal the understanding and values of past and present societies and how we are transforming the environment. According to Lefebvre (La production de l’espace, 1974), one of the ways of conditioning social reproduction occurs through the economic and political restriction of a group accessing space, thus it is vital to call our attention to how landscapes are being significantly transformed, conditioned and controlled. How can we understand landscapes and their identity in the contemporary transformation processes resulting from the dynamics of change and disrupting habits of our societies?

Photographic narratives of urban transformations 

Time, space, scale and movement are essential aspects of visual data production. Significant changes in cities’ flows can transpire in just a few minutes, hours or days, span several years or even decades. A diachronic study of an urban environment could concentrate on the repetitive patterns of many activities and phenomena that occur during a day or focus on transformations over much more extensive periods of time. Several photographic methods explicitly focus on sequentially researching social change and cultural expressions as they develop, over time in a particular space. Yet, art-based communication approaches express insights in more experimental ways, from ‘visual essays’ to digital storytelling, photo-novels, sometimes using pre-existing images, and even non-photographic ones. Boosted by new media technologies and networking opportunities, they are powerful contemporary vehicles for voicing and visualizing our reflections, ideas, arguments, experiences, and observations upon change, from manifestos to critical reviews, or just compelling stories.

Digital spectacle and its impact on architecture and the architectural image

As some argue that architecture is too slow for the digital revolution1, the resurrection of the collage, appeared as a viable strategy to critically reclaim architecture's place: one that, unlike simulations of binary realities, was to be a raw and ambiguous like an ‘open project’, even if computer simulated.  Due to its success, the collage has been taken over by the market for its ‘arresting novelty’. As a commodity, it compensates for architecture's slow pace: faster to produce and consume, less related to the disciplinary process of the conception, more evocative and less ideological.  To some, the ‘collage era’ represents the return of a richer, stronger profession2  while some claim they are blank postcards of a post-idealistic age, one where built quality rarely holds up. At a time when the true cost of globalization, consumption and constant growth is under discussion, should architecture embrace speed or is there the need for a counter-model? 

Photographic documentation of environmental transformations: Visual Essay

We have invited two authors and their visual essays that address the issue of photographic documentation of environmental transformation from different perspectives and visual constructs. On the one hand, to challenge our understanding on how contemporary photography can be explored as a meaningful instrument of research about today processes of urban change and architectural spaces. On the other hand, to discuss the material processes where photography is explored as a significant research tool for critical and innovative views on architecture and urban transformation.

Keynote Lecture: Epics of the Everyday
The keynote lecture will look at the historic and ongoing relationship between documentary photography and architecture through the lens of the ever-changing notion of realism.

Opening Session, Invited Speakers and Moderators

This edition of the International Conference Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations for this 6th number of Sophia Journal brings together a diverse group of researchers, architects, visual artists, and curators of international relevance, in an exercise of joint reflexivity about photographic documentation of environmental transformation from different perspectives and visual constructs. The talks held at this conference will allow the introduction of a number of issues that are not necessarily foreseen in the initial programme of the conference, enabling an active dialogue between researchers, authors and the public, contributing to the identification of new avenues of research and artistic expression related to how photography can be explored as a meaningful instrument of research about today processes of urban change and architectural spaces.

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

21 MAY 2021

09:30           OPENING SESSION

                         João Pedro Xavier (Director of FAUP)
Pedro Leão Neto - Wilfried Wang  

10:00            PANEL #1
                         Chairs / moderators: Carolina Leite + Carlos Machado e Moura

                        Presentation: Digital spectacle and its impact on architecture and the architectural image (CL)

                          Presentation: Photographic narratives of urban transformations (CMM) 

10:30 (44)     Vítor Alves: Copy/Paste: for today we save JPEG’s and browse PNG’s

10:45 (13)       Marcin Piekałkiewicz: Production of space in the photographic work of Naoya Hatakeyama

11:00 (06)      Giuseppe Resta: Landscape transformations in Albania. A photographic survey on the traces of Italian travellers in the Balkans

11:15 (24)       Luciano Bernardino da Costa: Verticalization: Photographic Explorations of Complex Urban Phenomena 

11:30 (35)      Jazmin Charalambous: How can photography reveal the effects of corporatisation on public spaces in London, and further, how can it contribute
to the creation of proposals that intervene in this process? (Wembley Park)

11:45 - 12:30   ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION #1

12:30 - 14:00  LUNCH BREAK

14:00               KEYNOTE LECTURE

                         Jesus Vassallo

                         Epics in the Everyday

14:45                PANEL #2

                         Chair / moderator – Carlos Machado e Moura  

15:00 (20)       Paulo Catrica, Rui Mendes: Models, Plans, Clusters & Pine Trees: Vila Nova de Santo André 1971-2021              

15:15 (40)        Haode Sun, Visual Misalignment: Faster Modernity and Slower Modernity: Photographic Documentation of Contemporary Urban Transformation
in Shanghai

15:30 (14)        Beatriz Duarte: Experimental persistence of change: a collage of palimpsestic temporalities of the Thermoelectric Power Station of Freixo
(Campanhã, Porto)       

15:45 (29)        Chloé Darmon: Archiving the abandoned washhouses of Oporto following the paths of washerwomen: a history of a women’s practice in the
modern urban space

16:00 - 16:30   ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION #2

16:30 - 16:35   BREAK

16:35                PANEL #3
                        Chair / moderator – Jorge Marum

                         Presentation: Photographing the altered identity of landscapes

16:50 (04)        Alla Lafonina, Vera Laponkina: Sacred place

17:05 (12)         Luca Donner, Francesca Sorcinelli: Replacing urban identity: the disappearance of Sha’biya Al Safa Neighbourhood

17:20 (45)        Yara A. Khalf, Ahmed El Antably, Mona A. Abdelwahab: A Walk Through Urban Decay: Is Al-Hattaba Worth Saving?

17:35 (19)         Ana Roberti, Helena Santos, Daniel Brandão, From intimacy to urban landscape: images of the transformations of the Rainha Dona Leonor social
housing

17:50 (28)        Gil Mualem-Doron, Present Absentees

18:05 - 18:40   ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION #3

22 MAY 2021

11:00                ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION #4

                        Chair / moderator – Wilfried Wang

                        Photographic documentation of environmental transformations: Visual Essay

                         Inaki Bergera

                         Pedro Leão Neto

12:30               CLOSING SESSION

ORGANIZATION

EXECUTIVE COMMITEE 
Pedro Leão Neto (FAUP) - Wilfried Wang (UTSoA)

PROGRAMMING

Carolina Leite (CEAU / FAUP)
Carlos Machado e Moura (CEAU / FAUP)
Jorge Marum (CIAUD-UBI)
Leonor Matos Silva (Dinâmia’CET, ISCTE-IUL)
Maria Neto (CEAU / FAUP - UBI)
Pedro Leão Neto (CEAU / FAUP)
Wilfried Wang (UTSoA)

ORGANISATION AND PRODUCTION
Miguel Santos (AAI / FAUP / VSC)
Sara Mota (scopio Editions)
Frederico Martinho (AAI / FAUP / VSC)

COMMUNICATION
FAUP / CEAU and Sophia Journal / scopio Editions

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Álvaro Domingues (FAUP/ CEAU)
Ana Janeiro
Andreia Oliveira
Eduarda Neves (ESAP)
Fernando Zaparaín (GIR UVa | ESPACIAR)
Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro (FBAUP / i2ADS)
Gisela Lameira (FAUP/ CEAU)
Isa Clara Neves (CES / CEAU / FAUP)
Iñaki Bergera (Arquitectura / UNIZAR)
João Carlos Ferreira (UFP - AAI / CEAU / FAUP)
Jorge Marum (UBI - AAI / CEAU)
José Alberto Lage (FAUP/ CEAU)
José Carneiro (FBAUP / i2ADS)
José Maças de Carvalho (DARQ)
José Manuel Barbosa (FAUP / FBAUP / i2ADS)
Jorge Jular (GIR UVa | ESPACIAR)
Margarida Medeiros (FCSH)
Mário Mesquita (FAUP / FBAUP / i2ADS)
Mark Durden (USW / eCDR)
Miguel Leal (FBAUP / i2ADS)
Olívia da Silva (P.PORTO / ESMAD)
Rui Lourosa (ESAP)
Susana Lourenço Marques (FBAUP / i2ADS)
Susana Ventura (FAUP / CEAU)
Teresa Ferreira (FAUP/ CEAU)
Victor dos Reis (FBAUL)


CONFERENCE TEAM
Carolina Leite (CEAU / FAUP)
Carlos Machado e Moura (CEAU / FAUP)
Jorge Marum (CIAUD-UBI)
Leonor Matos Silva (Dinâmia’CET, ISCTE-IUL)
Maria Neto (CEAU / FAUP - UBI)
Pedro Leão Neto (CEAU / FAUP)
Wilfried Wang (UTSoA)

Frederico Martinho (AAI / FAUP / VSC)
João Carlos Ferreira (UFP - AAI / CEAU / FAUP)
Miguel Santos (AAI / CEAU / FAUP)
Sara Lino (scopio Edition)

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Né Santelmo

PRINT AND WEBDESIGN
Sara Lino (scopio Edition)

EXIBITION PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECTS 
Curated by Visual Spaces of Change

Frederico Martinho (AAI / FAUP / VSC)
Miguel Santos (AAI / FAUP / VSC)
Sara Mota (scopio Editions)

The conference will be conducted in English.

Support for dissemination: U. Porto - Common House. | Marques da Silva Foundation and Northern Regional Section of the Order of Architects (OASRN).

Launching soon the 5th number of Sophia Journal | Lançamento e apresentação da publicação para breve - Visual Spaces of Change: Designing Interiority - shelter, shape, place, atmosphere and Ima (Copy)

Launching soon the 5th number of Sophia Journal | Lançamento e apresentação da publicação para breve

Launching soon the 5th number of Sophia Journal | Lançamento e apresentação da publicação para breve
Visual Spaces of Change: Designing Interiority - shelter, shape, place, atmosphere and Image

Guest Editors
Fátima Pombo (UA / DECA | ID+)
Silvina Félix (UA / ESAN | ID+)

ISBN:978-989-54878-3-7

ISSN: 2183-8976

Scientific Advisory Board (AAI-CEAU-FAUP)
Research group Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) integrated in R&D of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP) called Centro de Estudos de Arquitectura e Urbanismo (CEAU)

The 5th number of Sophia Journal, titled Visual Spaces of Change: Designing Interiority - shelter, shape, place, atmosphere is coming out soon.

To dwell and to build is not an art, is not a technique, but a realm where things belong. This is a statement addressed by Heidegger in Bauen Wohnen Denken, his text more connected with
architecture that is more contemporary than ever.

(...)
On the shoulders of these inspiring ideas and experiences, the plot for the 5th number of Sophia was designed. It called original articles that discuss the core of interiority in architecture as a matter open to diverse ideas and practices in the realm of built space to be experienced by its dwellers. Interiority to be argued as a dimension that differentiates a place of a non-place. The non-places are spots with which the individual does not create any relation; they are transit-places without memory, identity, history, personal construction, references, emotions of which solace is not a minor one. Interiority claims that kind of space that accommodates thoughts, dreams, nightmares, intimacy, changes, silence, noise, neurosis...life. Shelter, shape, place, atmosphere portray scenarios that enhance experiences, events, occurrences beyond the functionalistic rhetoric enveloping them. All the texts that compose this issue display the strong insights the authors chose to approach the proposed topic. They trigger new thoughts and new questions. Three articles and an interview appear as the hard core of this volume.

Fátima Pombo

(...)

Other featured texts can be read as the magnificent interview of Danish Designer Hans Thyge entitled The Power of Imagination by Guest Editor Fátima Pombo which offers valuable insight into the process and tools of this designer’s professional practice. Next are two probing critical texts, each written by a different architect curator - Nuno Grande and António Choupina - both of whom are very close to the work of Pritzker architect Álvaro Siza. Their readings focus on Siza’s architecture when analyzing two photography series by Mark Durden and João Leal from the collection “The Idea of Álvaro Siza”. These series focused on the Carlos Ramos Pavilion, Bouça Council Housing Project and Serralves Museum, published in a special edition of scopionewspaper, and both Nuno Grande and António Choupina offer a differentiated understanding of Siza’s oeuvres and his mastery of light and shadow, which the lens of the two photographers have so well conveyed. In Reviews we have Mark Durden’s remarkable text “Light Catcher” that tells us how the performances of the photographer Peter Finnemore reveal his relationship to the medium of photography and the way he apprehends and plays with light. Finally, in the essay “About the book: A Talk on Architecture in Photography” the editor of scopio Editions starts by contextualizing the upcoming book “Valerio Olgiati - Bas Princen. A Talk on Architecture in Photography - Images from Valerio Olgiati Personal Archive and Photographs by Bas Princen” to be published in 2021, which is based on the last Duelo/Dueto conference of Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) series that took place at the Casa das Artes and the work that followed with the authors. The physical books about these Duelo/Dueto conferences, for their part, offer the reader an understanding of what was discussed and debated coming from a different perspective, affording each viewer the proper time for deeper thinking.

Pedro Leão Neto

In Volume 5 of Sophia the following papers have been selected

Topic Papers 
Pedro Bandeira Maia, Raul Pinto: Preserving Heritage Through New Narratives: designing a guesthouse within a multidisciplinary team | Speaker: Raul Pinto

Bárbara dos Santos Coutinho, Ana Tostões: The Role of Architecture for an Exhibition Engaging and Meaningful Aesthetic Experience | Speaker: Bárbara dos Santos Coutinho

José António Bandeirinha, Rui Aristides: The modern Shelter: Laugier or Ledoux, metaphormosis or ex-novo, architecture for modern subjects and powers | Speaker: Rui Aristides

Featured Texts 

Interview The Power of Imagination - an interview to designer Hans Thyge by Fátima Pombo

Miscellany Critical essays: In praise of light and shadows by Nuno Grande and Des yeux qui ne voient pas by António Choupina about about photography series The Idea of Álvaro Siza of Mark Durden and João Leal

Reviews “Light Catcher” by Mark Durden and “About the book: A Talk on Architecture in Photography” by Pedro Leão Neto

Sophia Journal #5 is published by scopio Editions and will be out soon.

Launching soon | Lançamento e apresentação da publicação para breve - THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES by Mark Durden and João Leal

Launching soon | Lançamento e apresentação da publicação para breve
THE IDEA OF ÁLVARO SIZA: THE MUSEUM - SERRALVES by Mark Durden and João Leal

Editorial and Advisory Board
Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) research group Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

ISBN: 978-989-54878-2-0

ISSN: 2183-6906

Critical essays

“Des Yeux Qui Ne Voint Pas”

by António Choupina

I must confess that – due to a broken foot – my enchantment with nature was somewhat faded. Staring at these photographs became an almost cathartic experience, serenity washing over in a dream, renewing a passion for the universe that created architecture and that, in turn, is recreated by it. If the Boa Nova Tea House were like Saramago’s stone raft, adrift in a vast ocean, then the Serralves Museum would be like one of Cesário Verde’s bucolic poems, bathed in idyllic foliage. From the very first page, one discovers the building romantically dressed in seasonal vegetation, enveloped in a curtain of greenery, which drapes leaves as floating water lilies and droplets of rain. Distant windows seem to emerge beyond the sumptuous filter, manipulating a type of picturesque nostalgia: the primitive longing for a Garden of Eden or the simple magic of a child playing outside. Having planted an oak tree in Serralves, this interpretation might be biased by my own boyish recollections or, perhaps, the landscape architect was just prone to episodes of refined apophenia. João Gomes da Silva was invited by Álvaro Siza to help mediate the relationship with Jacques Gréber’s 1932 designs, supposedly inspired by the geometries of Versailles. When Siza’s Alhambra project was exhibited here, in 2017, I pointed out that Gréber’s octagons and waterlines were connected to Granada – like those of Luis Barragán or Louis Kahn. In fact, all of Serralves can be viewed as a modern-day Alhambra and not because of its embellished gardens, protected by a stone wall, but because of its sequencing of spaces, of light and shade.

(...)

"The phonomenology and identity of the bond between architecture and nature"

by Pedro Leão Neto

Mark Durden and João Leal’s photography series at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art constitute an aesthetic endeavour that reveals some of the Siza’s most significant traits. The Serralves is an architecture that affords a home to other arts, often allowing the exhibited art to be displayed in oneness with the place and not presented as isolated artefacts, as occurs, for example, with Pedro Cabrita Reis’s sculptures, which have established a strong connection with the exhibition spaces. Mark and João’s series create a visual narrative that brings together Serralves’ abstraction and poetics, as well as underscoring the significant relationship that the museum creates with the natural surroundings of the park1. Álvaro Siza has explained that the museum’s vision required him to create a design with the least possible impact on the surrounding urban setting and to avoid disrupting the gardens of the park and the Villa.

(...)

ESAP anuncia o projeto CONTRAST: Rede de iniciativas artísticas multidisciplinares na Arte, Arquitectura, Design e Fotografia

ESAP anuncia o projeto CONTRAST: Rede de iniciativas  artísticas multidisciplinares na Arte, Arquitectura, Design e Fotografia

O curso de Artes Visuais - Fotografia e a ESAP integram o projeto CONTRAST apoiado pela Direcção- Geral das Artes

A ESAP anuncia a sua parceria no projeto de dinamização cultural interdisciplinar CONTRAST que tem como objetivo a criação duma rede de iniciativas artísticas e reflexão crítica incentivando o debate sobre temas transversais à Arte, Arquitectura e Design através do mundo da Criação, do Editorial, e do Ensino da Fotografia em diversas áreas disciplinares.

Artes Visuais- Fotografia | CONTRAST

Ler Mais

FBAUL anuncia o projeto CONTRAST: Rede de iniciativas artísticas multidisciplinares na Arte, Arquitectura, Design e Fotografia

FBAUL anuncia o projeto CONTRAST: Rede de iniciativas  artísticas multidisciplinares na Arte, Arquitectura, Design e Fotografia

A FBAUL anuncia a sua parceria no projeto de dinamização cultural interdisciplinar CONTRAST que tem como objetivo a criação duma rede de iniciativas artísticas e reflexão crítica incentivando o debate sobre temas transversais à Arte, Arquitectura e Design através do mundo da Criação, do Editorial, e do Ensino da Fotografia em diversas áreas disciplinares.

Na FBAUL a coordenação é da responsabilidade dos professores Victor dos Reis e Rogério Taveira.

Ler Mais

CONCURSO INTERNACIONAL DE DESENHO E FOTOGRAFIA (DPIC) | ESPAÇO E IDENTIDADE DAS UNIVERSIDADES

CONCURSO INTERNACIONAL DE DESENHO E FOTOGRAFIA (DPIC) | ESPAÇO E IDENTIDADE
DAS UNIVERSIDADES

PT / ENG

Concurso inserido no âmbito do projeto de investigação
Visual Spaces of Change (VSC)
U.Porto – AAI | CEAU | FAUP
U.Minho – Centro ALGORITMI – Lab2PT

Prazo para submissão de projetos: 31 de Dezembro de 2021

ÂMBITO DO CONCURSO: REGRAS E PRÉMIOS
O Concurso Internacional de Desenho e Fotografia (DPIc) - Arquitectura, Arte e Imagem – UTOPIA 500 é direcionado para o Espaço e a Identidade das Universidades, e é aberto a toda a comunidade académica.

O tema nuclear do concurso é a ideia de Utopia e de Espaços Visuais de Mudança (VSC), tendo como enfoque os espaços e identidade das Universidades. O concurso é organizado pelo grupo de investigação AAI (FAUP) integrado no centro de I&D da FAUP (CEAU) e a AEFAUP, em parceria com as Associações de Estudantes de todas as outras Faculdades da U. Porto, sendo promotores o consórcio do projeto de investigação VSC, contando com o apoio institucional da Reitoria da U. Porto e da FAUP.

A coordenação do concurso é da responsabilidade do Centro de Arquitectura e Urbanismo da Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto (CEAU/FAUP) através do seu grupo de investigação AAI e o Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto (CETAPS/FLUP).

Visual Spaces of Change (VSC) é a primeira etapa de um projeto de Arquitetura, Arte, Imagem e Inovação (AAI2) sobre dinâmicas emergentes de mudança na Área Metropolitana do Porto (AMP). Projetos de Fotografia Contemporânea (CPP) serão desenvolvidos e implementados em locais específicos, concebidos como "narrativas visuais" que interferem intencionalmente com o território metropolitano num exercício de representação autorreflexiva de seu próprio processo de mudança urbana. Esta rede de espaços públicos e coletivos constituirá um "Museu Aberto" na AMP, estimulando instituições artísticas e culturais a ampliar seu alcance e participação no espaço público (ver mais informação no cap.VIII).

As ideias-chave presentes no concurso Desenho e Fotografia (DPIc) - Architecture, Art and Image – UTOPIA 500 são abrir as Universidades à Sociedade Civil através dos diversos projetos submetidos, mostrando a riqueza multifacetada de atividades, vivências e arquitecturas que assistem às Instituições de Ensino e dos seus diversos espaços de vivência e trabalho. 

Os candidatos, individualmente ou em equipa, deverão explorar de forma criativa o universo do Desenho e da Fotografia transmitindo, por um lado, um “outro olhar” sobre cada Faculdade e a forma como se relaciona com a Cidade, ou seja, uma visão crítica e poética sobre os espaços e vivências que as caracterizam e dão identidade, revelando facetas que antes estavam invisíveis ou esquecidas. Por outro lado, oferecer uma visão prospetiva e utópica sobre estes espaços de ensino o que significa um trabalho onde o desenho e a fotografia estão presentes e direcionam o desígnio do criador como instrumentos do pensamento e imaginação permitindo ampliar uma ideia de Arquitectura e de Cidade, bem como da apropriação e vivência dos seus espaços.

CAPÍTULO I – OBJETIVOS
Esta iniciativa tem como objetivo geral criar um novo espaço de comunicação e divulgação da relação das Universidades e das suas comunidades com a Sociedade Civil, ligado ao projecto de investigação Espaços Visuais de Mudança (VSC) favorecendo a abertura das Universidades à sociedade através de diversos tipos de interação, socialização,  estudo e investigação, promovendo a troca interdisciplinar de conhecimento e de experiências entre diversas áreas de conhecimento e segmentos sociais.

O concurso define como objetivos específicos:

- Contribuir para uma maior consciencialização das novas gerações, do potencial transformador da Arquitectura e sua relação com a Cidade tendo como as Universidades quer a nível nacional como estrangeiro e a partir do confronto de ideias relacionadas com os temas Utopia e  Espaços Visuais de Mudança (VSC), tornando estes conceitos operativos também para o universo das artes;
- Sensibilizar os jovens que estudam ou desenvolvem investigação nas áreas disciplinares da Arquitetura, das Belas Artes e da Imagem para o impacto que os seus trabalhos possam vir a ter para uma transformação inovadora e harmoniosa dos espaços de ensino que frequentam e a sociedade;
- Sensibilizar os alunos e cidadãos para a necessidade de se pensar em alternativas para os espaços de ensino que utilizam no dia a dia construídos / por construir;
- Promover uma compreensão da imagem e do seu uso enquanto método e meio de representação que permite novas formas de se entender e interagir com diversos espaços nos campos da Arquitetura e da Cidade;
- Evidenciar as vantagens da exploração da imagem enquanto meio capaz de atravessar fronteiras e deslocar limites entre diferentes problemáticas e áreas disciplinares da Arquitetura e da Arte, tendo como território de projecto e exploração os espaços de Universidade.

CAPÍTULO II – TEMA, MEIOS DE REPRESENTAÇÃO
E PARTICIPANTES 
O tema do concurso define-se em torno das ideias de Utopia e Espaços Visuais de Mudança (VSC). O desafio consiste na apresentação de um díptico visual composto por duas imagens, cada imagem em formato A3, podendo combinar ou não a fotografia com o desenho. A primeira imagem deve representar um determinado espaço duma Universidade (sala de aula, auditório, espaço de convívio exterior ou interior ou outro similar) tal como se encontram atualmente. Uma segunda imagem, também em formato A3, que representam uma nova visão de mudança, ou seja, prospetiva e utópica desse mesmo espaço dessa Universidade e sua apropriação. As duas imagens deverão vir acompanhadas de um texto, com um mínimo de 200 e um máximo de 500 palavras, que explique as ideias do díptico visual.

Aceitam-se candidaturas individuais ou coletivos, mas encoraja-se a formação de equipas multidisciplinares - estas poderão ser compostas por indivíduos com diferentes perfis académicos sendo, contudo obrigatório que pelo menos um dos elementos esteja ligado ao universo da Arquitetura, das Artes Plásticas e da Imagem, esteja inscrito no ensino superior ou faça parte de um centro de investigação. Nenhum dos elementos deverá ter mais de 35 anos. Não será possível a apresentação de mais do que um trabalho a concurso por cada elemento (individualmente ou em grupo).

Esta iniciativa é especialmente dirigida a alunos universitários, nacionais e estrangeiros, podendo estes pertencer a qualquer área disciplinar com interesse nestas temáticas. O envolvimento das Associações de Estudantes é desejado para facilitar a constituição de equipas interdisciplinares, tendo a nível nacional como parceiros institucionais as Associações de Estudantes da U.Porto e a Reitoria da U.Porto, que serão espaços de receção de trabalhos, debate de ideias e comunicação.

CAPÍTULO III - ESPECIFICAÇÕES TÉCNICAS
É obrigatória a existência de pelo menos um dos dois modos de representação – Desenho e/ou Fotografia -, não existindo nenhuma limitação relativamente às formas de manipulação e combinação destes dois modos de representação, sendo permitida a colagem e a fotomontagem. Pretende-se que as narrativas visuais do concurso sejam críticas e poéticas do presente e prospetivas e utópicas relativamente ao futuro, no sentido de propor novos espaços de mudança e apropriação para esses lugares de ensino.

É assim objetivo do concurso que cada narrativa visual – díptico - comunique um espaço real e um idealizado capaz de despertar uma nova consciência sobre o lugar representado, estimulando as pessoas a experienciar esses espaços a partir de novas perspetivas.

Dípticos que correspondem a uma apropriação estética onde a fotografia de arquitectura e o desenho estão presentes de forma significativa e que são capazes de constituir pontos de partida para uma nova compreensão e perceção desses lugares de ensino. Visões capazes de documentar e registar arquitecturas, vivências e lugares em permanente mudança, bem como constituir uma forma de conhecimento do real em confronto com visões prospetivas e utópicas desses espaços. 

CAPÍTULO IV - SUBMISSÃO DE CANDIDATURAS, JÚRI E SELEÇÃO
Os trabalhos deverão ser submetidos por e-mail para o endereço dpic.vsc@arq.up.pt, sendo enviados, para além do formulário de inscrição devidamente preenchido, dois arquivos separados em formato JPEG ou TIFF, cada arquivo com um máximo de 5 MB, correspondentes às 1.ª e 2.ª imagens do díptico visual descrito no Capítulo II deste Regulamento. Os Arquivos deverão ser identificados através do nome abreviado do projeto seguido dos números 1 e 2, respetivamente. As imagens não deverão ostentar quaisquer assinaturas ou marcas de água. As imagens que incluam fotografias apresentadas a concurso deverão permitir qualidade de impressão, sob pena de não serem selecionadas para o catálogo a ser publicado pela scopio Editions.

As duas imagens deverão vir acompanhadas de um texto, com um mínimo de 200 e um máximo de 500 palavras, que explique as ideias do díptico visual.

O júri será composto por curadores, arquitetos, artistas e apreciadores das Artes  oportunamente anunciados, que analisarão e selecionarão os trabalhos mais inovadores neste concurso internacional. O júri selecionará num primeiro momento 20 trabalhos, e os autores desses trabalhos serão convidados a enviar os originais para que sejam expostos em diversos espaços públicos, interiores e exteriores. Os visitantes das exposições serão convidados a votar na obra que considerarem mais interessante através de uma plataforma online criada para esse efeito. Dessa votação resultará a ordenação das obras de 1 a 20 pontos. Não haverá lugar a apelo do vencedor nomeado pelo júri. Os membros das instituições promotoras ou parceiras do concurso não poderão submeter trabalhos.

Este concurso tem uma importante componente de rede e Internet que são entendidos como instrumentos capazes de criar sinergias e estabelecer pontes comunicativas e permitir uma maior abrangência da mensagem, bem como criar sinergias com as diversas exposições relacionadas com as temáticas abordadas tendo como base os conteúdos produzidos.

CAPÍTULO V - PRÉMIOS
CAPÍTULO V - PRÉMIOS
Os trabalhos selecionados estarão em exposição durante o período da edição de 2021 a 2022 do projeto Visual Spaces of Change (VSC). Todos os autores dos trabalhos selecionados receberão um certificado. Da votação será apurado um vencedor e, eventualmente, uma ou duas Menções Honrosas, a quem será atribuído um documento certificando a seleção do júri. Estes trabalhos serão destacados nos sites dos projetos VSC e scopio Network, bem como nas plataformas do Sigarra da U. Porto.

O vencedor do concurso receberá o seguinte conjunto de títulos publicados pela scopio Editions:
Pedro Gadanho - Paolo Rosselli: A Talk on Architecture In Photography
Luis Ferreira Alves, Fotografias em Obras de  Eduardo Souto de Moura
The Idea of Álvaro Siza: Carlos Ramos Pavilion And Bouça Social Housing + Serralves Museum by Mark Durden and João Leal

Serão dados os seguintes exemplares a cada um dos  autores das Menções Honrosas:
Viewfinder: 6th scopio Magazine International Photography Contest
SCOPIO Magazine Crossing borders shifting boundaries: city
SCOPIO Magazine Crossing Borders Shifting Boundaries: Architecture + Addendum

A organização do concurso procurará ativamente prémios juntos dos patrocinadores desta iniciativa que possam ser atribuídos ao vencedor e aos autores distinguidos com Menções Honrosas.

CAPÍTULO VI - DISPOSIÇÕES GERAIS
Só serão considerados os trabalhos que obedeçam ao presente Regulamento. Todos as outras candidaturas serão desclassificadas. Apenas os projetos de desenho e fotografia que cumpram critérios mínimos de qualidade e respeitem o tema proposto serão admitidos a concurso. A Organização do Concurso não se responsabiliza por eventuais cópias digitais das fotografias submetidas. Qualquer situação omissa será resolvida através de deliberação do júri do Concurso. A Organização do Concurso reserva-se o direito de publicar os trabalhos apresentados a concurso, de acordo com a lei portuguesa 2/99 de 13 de janeiro. A Organização do Concurso ficará com os copyrights dos projetos apresentados. Os originais não serão devolvidos aos autores, exceto sob pedido expresso dos mesmos e mediante o pagamento dos portes de correio.

CAPÍTULO VII - COMISSÃO ORGANIZADORA E TÉCNICA
Comissão Organizadora:
Grupo de investigação AAI (FAUP) integrado no centro de I&D da FAUP (CEAU) e Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto (CETAPS/FLUP). 

Parcerias: Projetos Arquitectura, Arte e Imagem (AAI), UTOPIA 500, VSC, AAI2 Lab e a AEFAUP, com o apoio institucional da Reitoria da U. Porto, da Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade do Porto.

Contactos: AAI / CEAU / FAUP - Universidade do Porto Via Panorâmica s/n 4150-564 Porto
dpic.vsc@arq.up.pt

CAPÍTULO VIII – VISUAL SPACES OF CHANGE
Visual Spaces of Change (VSC) é a primeira etapa de um projeto de Arquitetura, Arte, Imagem e Inovação (AAI2) com uma componente significativa da Fotografia Contemporânea, combinada com pesquisa complementar em Sintaxe Espacial e Tecnologias da Informação. Com base em pesquisas anteriores do grupo de investigação Arquitectura, Arte e Imagem (AAI/CEAU), este projeto irá investigar as condições para a criação de uma rede de espaços públicos e coletivos capazes de catalisar dinâmicas emergentes de mudança na Área Metropolitana do Porto (AMP). O território em estudo é utilizado simultaneamente como laboratório para experimentação empírica e palco de representação visual dos agentes e processos de mudança urbana que se pretendem analisar. Este projeto produzirá sínteses visuais dessas dinâmicas para dar visibilidade a aspectos específicos da sua natureza interconectada e singularidade histórica que são difíceis de perceber sem o uso propositivo da imagem e da fotografia. Este projeto abre novos caminhos de investigação ao propor uma combinação original de métodos de investigação visual e análise espacial a partir da identificação de um conjunto de espaços e percursos estratégicos na cidade, conectados por pontos de conexão identificados na rede urbana. Estes pontos são calculados através de métricas sintáticas que permitem otimizar a interação entre espaços públicos e coletivos. Projetos de Fotografia Contemporânea (CPP) serão desenvolvidos e implementados em locais específicos, concebidos como "narrativas visuais" que interferem intencionalmente com o território metropolitano num exercício de representação auto-reflexiva de seu próprio processo de mudança urbana.

Esta rede de espaços públicos e coletivos constituirá um "Museu Aberto" na AMP, permitindo a realização de ações curatoriais experimentais, estimulando instituições artísticas e culturais a ampliar seu alcance a uma maior audiência pública. Ao articular recursos materiais e imateriais que, juntos, dão mais visibilidade às dinâmicas de mudança urbana em curso, este projeto visa alterar as percepções do público sobre a transformação do espaço público e transformar coletivamente os imaginários da cidade à escala metropolitana. A estratégia para promover essa articulação baseia-se na identificação de propriedades físicas de integração, conectividade e sinergia entre espaços públicos e coletivos, potenciadas pelo desenvolvimento de ferramentas on-line de interação virtual processada em múltiplas escalas. Para este efeito, uma plataforma digital será desenvolvida para inserir dados visuais num sistema georreferenciado com várias camadas temporais em 4D (espaço e tempo), permitindo a acessibilidade, difusão, monitoramento e compartilhamento de informações visuais. Esta plataforma permitirá também as condições para um diálogo ativo entre investigadores, instituições e o público, contribuindo para a identificação de oportunidades de co-evolução entre cidadãos, instituições e o ambiente urbano.