IJUP08 - Universidade do Porto

Contemporary condition: ‘new’ relationships between
architecture and city
Mariana Alves 1
1 Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto, Portugal.
The city is the real field of action of the architect. The architect of today doesn’t work on a
tabula rasa, but on a complex structure of voids and fulls. The architecture of the city has
always constituted a great challenge to the architects through the complexity that is directly
associated with. It has a primordial role in the construction, transformation and identity of
the cities.
The thesis is structured in six chapters organized by case study, author and theme. In each
chapter there is an approach of the architect projectual strategy, an analysis of the case
study that includes an introduction, a characterization of the urban space, the environment
context, the morphology and a critical synthesis of the author.
In the introduction some remarkable examples of History, remind us the power of the
architecture of the city in the development and construction of the urban space. The thesis
focuses the impact of iconographic buildings in the contemporary city. Guggenheim
Museum, in Bilbao, by Frank Gehry is an example of the catalyser effect of the
architecture. The intervention has started an important revitalization in the city, spreading
out a powerful energy through the titanic forms. Casa da Música, in Porto represents the
objectual strategy. The formal contrast and the scale rupture that characterize the building
make part of the conceptual approach of Rem Koolhaas – the architecture as a global
product for a mass culture and for a metropolitan territory in a constant mutation. The
Center Georges Pompidou, in Paris, is mainly an ideological building. Its complexity and
contradiction come out through different directions as far as the relationship with the urban
context and the architectural language concerns. On one hand, the approach to the city
through the square, having as reference the dynamic italian square; on the other hand the
technological language with references in Archigram’s projects. The impact of the tower
typology in the urban space is developed with Burgo Building, in Porto and Seagram
Building, in New York. The two towers mark the landscape through the abstract and
synthetic value of the architectural system. With Burgo Building, Souto de Moura wants to
build “a precise landscape”, a scenography and a specific abstract relationship with the
place. The Galician Center for Contemporary Art and Serralves Museum are two buildings
in which Siza reinforces the concept of architectural continuity. There are constant
references to the importance of the context and the place identity. The shape of Siza’s
buildings wants to participate in the shape of the city, wants to establish an order of
continuity. The Tate Modern, in London, is a building where are present Rossi’s teachings
about the permanence of the shape and the structuring value of the architecture of the city.
Herzog & de Meuron operate surgically in the pre-existence reanimating the old industrial
building as an important urban forum.
All the study cases identify a place, transform the urban landscape and try to give answers
to the complexity of the territory. They want to fix a time in the cities, to establish new
polarities, to essay through the architecture prospective and erudite answers; add sensuality
and intelligence to the urban space.
70