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The Permanent Performance & Philosophy Seminar held in the context of the Performance & Philosophy Department of AELab (Aesthetics and Philosophy Laboratory for Artistic Practices of the IFILNOVA - Institute of Philosophy of the Nova University in Lisbon) has as goal to constitute itself as a platform for discussion and experimentation in the performance and philosophy fields in their theoretical and practice dimensions, uniting researchers and artists.

The fourth session will be held by me under the title "How to compose sensations in architecture - construction of a Map of Intensities". The Seminar will take place on the 27th of January of 2016, between 6-8 p.m., Room 0.06, Building I&D / Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Nova University in Lisbon (Avenida de Berna 26). These sessions are free and open to all interested. 

O Seminário Permanente em Performance e Filosofia, realizado no contexto da secção de Performance e Filosofia do AELab - Laboratório de Estética e de Filosofia das Práticas Artísticas do IFILNOVA - Instituto de Filosofia da Nova, tem por objectivo constituir-se como uma plataforma de discussão e experimentação entre as áreas da performance e da filosofia nas suas dimensões teóricas e práticas, reunindo investigadores e artistas. 

A quarta sessão consiste no Seminário da investigadora Pós-Doc Susana Ventura, intitulado "Como compor sensações em arquitectura - construção de um mapa intensivo". O seminário terá lugar no dia 27 de Janeiro de 2016, entre as 18h00 e as 20h00, na sala 0.06, Edifício I&D / Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Avenida de Berna 26, Lisboa). Estas sessões são livres e abertas a todos os interessados.

On the 2nd of December, at 3.00 p.m., I'll be lecturing at the School of Architecture of the University of Évora about the composition of intimacy as a spatial sensation. 

On the 21st of November morning (panel 19), I'll be presenting my paper "Intensive Architecture: an inexistent aesthetic category in the Theory of Architecture - through the study of silence as a spatial sensation", at the This Thing Called Theory Conference (AHRA 2015 - 12th International Architectural Humanities Research Association Conference), at the Leeds Beckett University, School of Art, Architecture and Design.

I'll discuss how "Intensive architecture" is an inexistent category in the theory of architecture, stemming from the aesthetic problem of sensation, which aims to understand how certain sensations, such as intimacy, silence, contemplation, among others, are composed in space and sustained through time (as the eternal quality of the work of art. 

The Cemetery in Malmö, by Lewerentz, and the Steilneset Memorial in Vardø, by Zumthor, are the two examples to be analysed where one may find silence as a spatial sensation that fills the interval of an intensive body-space, independently of time and seasons.

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My three short films "Intimacy", "Silence", "Contemplation" will be displayed at video station #1 at Arquiteturas Film Festival Lisbon 2015, at Forum Lisboa Mezzanine, from the 1st until the 4th of October.

The three films – “Intimacy”, “Silence”, “Contemplation” – result from an expedition journey to an intensive architecture through Japan, Center and North Europe, conducted between June and August of 2014, within the Fernando Távora’s Award and a Post-Doctoral research project. They are mainly experimental and instrumental films that use the empirical experience as first matter of research and expression. Each film seeks to unveil how each one of the sensations is composed in the space, the mechanisms, artifices and matters of expression that gave birth to it, and that belong insomuch to the landscape, where the work belongs, as to the imagination it awakens or the body that inhabits, even if absent.

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""What is architecture?" is, by nature, an open question. In a certain way, the history of the discipline can be understood as a sequence of definitions that, trying to stabilize the meaning of architecture, paradoxically put it in motion. Therefore, in the universe of possible answers to this question, relations, interceptions and oppositions emerge, which may, more than anything, keep the interrogative condition. In the limit, it is for not knowing the answer limits. The replacement of the question, one and another time again, expresses the vitality and plurality inherent in the very definition of architecture. Under the project of the online residencies RAUM platform, we pose this question to a group of 15 Portuguese Architects who were born after the revolution of 1974. If the question is in textual mode, the answer that we have required is visual, give the structural relationship that architects establish with images. In a broad spectrum of disciplinary activity, we asked these young architects to present a definition of architecture in the form of a triptych".

Debate, LX Factory, 22.10, 19H-21H

On the 6th of October, Le Corbusier’s birthday, I gave a lecture at Matosinhos City Hall. The lecture was titled “Intimacy, Silence, Contemplation” and it’s the result of a journey I did during the months of June and July to Japan, Centre and North of Europe, visiting the works of Kazuo Shinohara, James Turrell, Peter Zumthor, Adolf Loos, Sigurd Lewerentz among others. 

This journey corresponds to the beginning of a Post-Doctoral project (following a PhD project in Philosophy - Aesthetics, FCSH-UNL, May 2013), titled Towards an intensive architecture, at FAUP, under scientific supervisory of Professor Doutor José Miguel Rodrigues (FAUP) and Professora Doutora Ana Godinho Gil (FCSH-UNL) and was selected as the winner of the 9th edition of the Prémio Fernando Távora by the jury (composed of Paula Santos, Pedro Bandeira, Maria José Ferrão, José António Bandeirinha and José Pedro Croft).

Visit the expedition's website at http://www.expedicaoaumaarquitecturaintensiva.com (in portuguese only, for the moment).

Press: Público / FAUP / Scopio / Casa da Arquitectura / Arquitecturas / ArchDaily Brasil / Construir / Archready

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On the day of P3's 3rd anniversary, the newspaper asked some people to be the genie in the lamp and present three wishes for the future.

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Curated by Architect Pedro Campos Costa, Homeland – News from Portugal is the Portuguese Official Representation at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The curator has invited six teams to work on different themes about Housing. I have the pleasure to be working with SAMI Architects on the Detached House and, particularly, about the creation of a space of intimacy. 

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Período de candidaturas
de 5.JUL a 16.SET
www.habitarportugal.org 

Proposta para um novo mapa do habitar
A presente edição Habitar Portugal 09_11, iniciativa do Conselho Directivo Nacional da Ordem dos Arquitectos, pretende divulgar uma selecção de obras construídas por arquitectos portugueses, entre 2009 e 2011, em território nacional ou estrangeiro. 
Entende-se que, actualmente, muito para além das delimitações regionais, a obra de arquitectura encontra outras formas de se referenciar, nas múltiplas relações que estabelece com o território, mas também com outras obras, sejam estas próximas ou distantes, procurando os seus meios de fundação, de materialidade, auto-referenciação e criação de uma linguagem própria. 
Embora seja complexo categorizar um conjunto consistente de elementos e referências que condicionam e enformam a obra de arquitectura na sua heterogeneidade, procura-se, nesta edição Habitar Portugal, mapear as múltiplas expressões que a obra cria na sua relação com o território, com outras obras e com o habitar. 
Identificam-se ligações, linhas imaginariamente impressas no território, que unem obras díspares entre si, pontos singulares (pontos costeiros, rurais, interiores, montanhosos, internacionais) mas que, na relação que estabelecem entre si ou com a paisagem, criam importantes ressonâncias. 
Procura-se, por exemplo, compreender como é que uma obra de arquitectura da planície alentejana, pode estabelecer um diálogo com uma outra da aridez transmontana, ambas vincadas pela sua condição de interioridade. E descobrir que lugares são estes, que estas obras constroem e que remetem para outras obras, que criam uma paisagem que recolhe traços de outras paisagens, sendo possível desenhar uma linha contínua e comum, que passa, no entanto, por paisagens muito distintas e por obras que mantêm, acima de tudo, a sua singularidade. 
Essas linhas constituem narrativas que atravessam diferentes momentos, construindo afinidades, mas também disparidades, permitindo pensar todas estas transições, não só entre realidades naturais e artificiais, mas, também, sociais, económicas e políticas, definindo um novo mapa, que já não é circunscrito ao território nacional, mas que se estende e atravessa muitos lugares, continuando a ser expressão de uma arquitectura portuguesa. Como resultado, espera-se uma nova geografia, gerada pelos novos pontos e linhas que induzem itinerários através da arquitectura portuguesa, pelos lugares que cada obra constrói, transforma e qualifica. 

COMISSARIADO
Susana Ventura
Maria Rita Pais
Rita Dourado

On the 8th of May, I will be lecturing at the ARbD’14 – Fourth International Conference on Architectural Research by Design: Unifying Academia and Practice through Research, about “Material Experimentation in Peter Zumthor’s creative process: research design through material inquiry”.

Abstract: 

Material experimentation in Peter Zumthor’s creative process seeks to explain the different materials experimentations present in the creative process of Peter Zumthor which lead him to the final work of architecture, resulting in his atmospheres (or the “saturation of the atom”, as V. Wolf would say). Experimentation processes are mainly characteristic of avant-gard architectures that develop new forms of thought in architecture design, however mainly through form paradigms and models. Nonetheless, Zumthor has been inquiring and creating experimental processes through material composition, rooted in the work of land-artists such as Joseph Beuys or Mario Merz, that imply the overall design of the final work of architecture. One of the several examples is how the lead floor of the Bruder Klaus Kapelle was meticulously designed carefully combining not only several processes involving the composition, amount and proportions of materials but also a peculiar way tested to the very limit how the liquid was then spilled and crystallized. The present lecture will explain several experimental processes present in a series of Peter Zumthor’s, with an important focus to the design process of the Serpentine Summer Pavilion during 2011, one of the works the author has accompanied Zumthor during its process of creation during her PhD research.

Susan Sontag’s concerns, which led to her well-known essay On Photography, may today be easily understood within the context of the emergence of photography and following Walter Benjamin’s remarkable essay on this new, yet mechanically reproducible, visual art. Nevertheless, both authors’ concerns and doubts about the art of photography seem now solved or taken as facts, given to us by the infinite probabilities of photography, not only as an interpretation of itself, but also through the multiplication of different viewpoints, of different subjects relating to those same viewpoints or searching for new ones, in and out of the photographic image, instead of taking it as a “miniature of reality”, which itself (the reality) has proven to be infinite as of both the unconscious gaze and the camera itself, as Benjamin had stated. Today,  it seems evident that photography is no longer just a document, capable of replacing a bygone reality (although it may work as such), nor is it merely the result of the photographer’s desire to keep a memory alive (not just his memory but a collective one). Photography isn’t pure fiction as well, an invented narrative, albeit on the surface all may be fiction, all elements may be manufactured, invented, masterfully arranged to create a troubling picture between fiction and reality, or a latent ambiguity between document and narrative. Not even Demand’s photographs reenact that doubt today, since what is interesting is not the manufacturing of reality through models later photographed by the author, but the fiction told by those models transformed into images, making the process of storytelling visible, without any ambiguity. Similarly, the ambiguity can be generated not only around the dichotomies imaginary-reality or document-fiction, but also around several parallel dichotomies, in all the frontiers capable of creating a visual disarray, where photographers start (and have started) by questioning the genres and their identities, following, once again, the history of facts, the different struggles cities, societies and cultures have faced.

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It was magnificent. High, it touched the sky and embraced the land. The trunk was wide, with dark veins and the first branches grew close to the ground, but quickly took over the sky and drew dizzying lines overhead. The empty space, the pure air, seemed to always move through its naked branches, even without wind. One day, Gordon decided to inhabit it, even for a moment, and created, not a house, which would certainly be too perennial - and he wouldn’t want to contradict the proper future of the tree, of growing endlessly, continually adding to the time small spaces shaped by its branches, increasing energy that flows from the earth to the sky, as in his drawings of trees - but a structure made with ropes, ladders and nets, which several dancers could easily embrace, the trunk, the branches, through the voids, only a feet away from the arms to the hands, to move the air and create swings to the wind or spaces, small pouches just to lay down. (Even when he used to draw a house in a tree, it was made of oscillating movements, lifting platforms, an intercalary movement through the unique rhythm created by the trunk, the branches, the foliage.) The movements would be slow, paused, in constant play with light and space and with the space between the light, passing through the branches and between branches and the air, the moving air, and between different bodies, between each of the dancers.

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I was invited by Inês Dantas (wuda*) to present her exhibition called “Emospheric Landscapes” at Edge-Arts Gallery during its opening day. Inês Dantas’ exhibition was curated by Felisa Perez (curator of Edge-Arts Gallery) as an Associated Project of the Third Lisbon Architecture Triennial. Arte Institute has supported this show and directed the present video from the opening day. Interviewers: Inês Dantas (architect and author of Emospheric Landscapes), Felisa Perez (main curator at Edge-Arts Gallery), Ana Ventura Miranda (Arte Institute) and Susana Ventura (invited author).

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Firstly, Pedro Leão Neto will make clear the main theme for the next cycle of scopio Magazine – Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries –, announce the winner and the honorable mentions of the international photography contest aboveground territory, and reveal the next photography contests: “scopio international Photography Contest” and “cityscopio international Photobook Contest”. 

Secondly, Vitor Silva, responsible for the Drawing 2 course unit in FAUP and one of the editors of PSIAX, a magazine on drawing and image, will make a general presentation of scopio Magazine that on this 3rd number completes its first cycle devoted to the Aboveground main theme, which was developed for the three classes Architecture, City and Territory.

On a third moment, Álvaro Domingues, responsible for the Geography course unit in FAUP and author of the Territory article on the Review section of scopio aboveground territory will speak on the theme of territory and its relation to the image, having as a reference his work and his various publications on the transformation of the portuguese landscape such as, for example, his recent work “Vida no Campo” (Life on the Countryside) published by Dafne. 

The third stage will be an open public debate and the session will end with a Port wine reception – Niepoort.

Scopio is an editorial line related to Photography and Image of Architecture, City and Territory, which took as inspiration the bookzines and zines, alternative publications where the photographic image is used as a research tool in order to communicate new perspectives on the city space.

This number includes my interview with Bas Princen.

Conferência Ensino e Práticas da Arquitectura: Passado e Presente. FAUP | Sala Plana | 28 de Fevereiro de 2013 | 15.30

Abstract of my intervention at CPAM 2012 (Portuguese Architects Concentration in Mação)

Read the abstract. (in portuguese).

“Life is organized around what is hollow.” 

Never these words had made as much sense as in this moment. Alice thought, enthralled, repeating, to herself, to exhaustion, this single phrase, at the check-in line. She was still incredulous, after the news that made her come back from New York. And, unintentionally, it escapes her, once, out loud. In front of her, a rushed couple turns around, perplexed, and murmurs a phrase of indignation, which Alice, just, understands by the wrinkling of their foreheads and the shrugging of the husband’s left shoulder. But now what to do with that void? It wouldn’t be her, certainly, thinking about it, but she couldn’t get José’s image out of her head, in her last visit to the Bordeaux house. José’s accident had put him on a wheelchair, for a few years, and, he only got to be free again when he moved, along with his family, to the Bordeaux house. There, a whole void filled his days, the hours, the minutes that the outside world denied him. It wasn’t him that filled a void. It was that immense void, vertical, directed at the clouds, that received José and allowed him to do everything he enjoyed, without inhibitions, without restrictions. One exception only: when he wanted to take a peek at his kids in their bedrooms. A void united all the spaces in his house, an elevatory platform which was his house (and not the space around it) and one other void, abrupt, between him and his kids, who kept on growing up. But what to do with that void which was but him? It was impossible for Alice not to review all these images in her head, as the check-in line moved forward. Window or aisle? It seemed indifferent, the immensity of the blue sky, at this moment. What did it interest her? She wouldn’t be able to measure the air, to feel even the slightest change in the surface of her skin and, certainly, she would keep on breathing normally, without even having to inspire really deeply.

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Material experimentation in Peter Zumthor’s creative process seeks to explain the different materials experimentations present in the creative process of Peter Zumthor which lead him to the final work of architecture, resulting in his atmospheres. Experimentation processes are mainly characteristic of avant-gard architectures that develop new forms of thought in architecture design, however mainly through form paradigms and models. Nonetheless, Zumthor has been inquiring and creating experimental processes through material composition, rooted in the work of land-artists such as Joseph Beuys or Mario Merz, that imply the overall design of the final work of architecture. The present paper explains several experimental processes present in a series of Peter Zumthor’s works, with an important focus to the design process of the Serpentine Summer Pavilion during 2011, one of the works that the author has accompanied Zumthor during its process of creation during the author’s PhD research.

Continue reading...