Architecture and Art in the (Re)Construction of the Urban Place is a Cycle of Debates that promotes a moment of public and collective reflection around the contemporary processes of urban spatial production.

 

Based on an approach to the practice of professionals with different experiences in production processes in the built environment, are proposed, between October and December 2024, four different discussion panels with subtopics.
Each session aims to understand the multidimensional urban reality, activating an interdisciplinary dialogue between the different actors who contribute to the conception and materialization of public space (architects, landscapers, designers, artists, public decision-makers, curators, researchers…), trying to establish a bridge between the creative disciplines of Architecture and Art, as a potential response to the challenges of the contemporary city.
Together, an attempt will be made to map the objectives, purposes and interests of different scales of action in the production processes of various cities, with the aim of asking how we should, Today, think about our complex reality, with a view to a more significant, integrated and humanized evolution of the urban sense of place.

 

The second debate features the participation of Professor Maria Manuel Oliveira (EAAD/UMinho) and Lab2PT/IN2PAST integrated researcher, with Ana Jotta, Ricardo Rodrigues and Inês Moreira. In this conversation, the urban rehabilitation work of Praça do Toural, the result of the European Capital of Culture Guimarães 2012, will be analyzed, bringing its authors – the architect Maria Manuel Oliveira and the artist Ana Jotta – to talk. As a controversial intervention with a divergent reception by several local agents, the aim, in light of the temporal distance of more than a decade, is to understand what learning can be learned from this process for future transdisciplinary processes of urban intervention.
Parallel to this retrospective look, the debate aims to understand the current and future regeneration of the Couros Neighborhood (Unesco World Heritage Site, 2023) in its strategy of inclusion of Public Art. To this end, architect Ricardo Rodrigues, current Head of Division of the Historic Center, will focus on these rehabilitation processes, analyzing the role of Art in this process of transformation of the city of Guimarães. The conversation features researcher Inês Moreira (ESAP-CEAA), Cultural Programmer and Architecture Curator at the European Capital of Culture 2012, who challenges the disciplinary and operational limits of artistic and architectural practices in the production of contemporary urban culture, and can help to critically look at this issue.

 

This Cycle of Debates is part of the research developed by Inês Osório (FCT Fellow) within the scope of the Doctoral Program in Architecture, Dynamics and Urban Forms, at FAUP, affiliated with the research group ‘Morphologies and Dynamics of the Territory’ of the Center for Studies of Architecture and Urbanism (MDT/CEAU-FAUP).

 

Organization, research and moderation: Inês Osório (CEAU-FAUP) | Co-moderation: Helena Mendes Pereira (Zetgallery)

Free Admission.

 

 

Image: © Ângelo de Sousa. Esquisso, “Cá Fora: Arquitetura Desassossegada”, intervention project co-authored by Ângelo de Sousa & Eduardo Souto de Moura, at the Fondaco Marcello Building (Grand Canal in Venice, Italy), Venice Architecture Biennale, 2008.

 

 

Debates calendar:

15 October. 6.30 pm, FAUP

Atelier do Corvo, Gémeo Luis, Fernando Rocha and Álvaro Domingues
‘Integrating Dialogues, Listening to Potential’

 

7 November 6.30 pm, CAAA Maria Manuel Oliveira, Ana Jotta, Ricardo Rodrigues and Inês Moreira
‘Urban Centers: Connecting Memory, Uses and Meaning’

 

9 November 4.30 pm, Zetgallery Rui Mendes, Fernanda Fragateiro, João Gomes da Silva and Sara Antónia Matos
‘Sensing the Context, Building the City, Shaping Identity’

 

3 December 6.30 pm, FAUP

Topotek1 Studio, Rui Mealha, Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro and José Pedro Sousa
‘The Systemic City: Territories of the Future, Paths of the Past

 

 

 

+ info about the debates and biographical notes: HERE