Texts of Fernando Távora, Joao de Melo, Domingo Tavares, Sergio Fernández, Alexandre Alves Costa, José Antonio Bandeirinha, Víctor Maestre, Josa Santa Rita and Javer Gallego Roca, make up the book Architectural and urban renovation and restoration in Portugal, published by the University of Granada, with the collaboration of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, the Camoes Institute and the Portugal Embassy.
The volume, profusely illustrated, has almost 250 pages and collects the works carried out on the occasion of the Torres Balbás Seminar, articulated around the contest announced to adapt the old Military Hospital as the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Granada and devoted to the foundations of the urban-architectural intervention in the historical city.
According to the Professor of Architectural Constructions of the University of Granada, Javier Gallego Roca, “Torres Balbás seminar considers from an experimental critical position reflections or works linked to restoration. In this case, we are interested in showing the present experience of Portugal, in particular of three of its more evocative cities: Oporto, Lisbon and Coimbra”.
Social, economic and institutional needs, typycal of each time, coexist in the historical city with cultural valuation of urban heritage and the need for preserving it. “The complex of techniques and connections that lay the foundations of the new instruments –Gallego Roca claims—and the concepts typical of the intervention in historic city centres, its conservative perspective lives together with a multiform reality where the urban and architectural project develops”.
“As a whole –the Professor from Granada says—it all is a complex process defined by the project through the transformation, which makes the preservation of our architectural heritage possible integrating it in contemporary life”.
For his part, Joao Melo makes a statement of stone memory in his speech on Portuguese architecture portuguesa in Granada and claims: “Every time I have to reflect on that scientific art Architecture is, the first words I think of are stone and house. I do not know exactly why. In addition, nowadays, in today´s cities, if there are fallen out materials, stone houses are the most obsolete ones. But maybe this affective relationship with stone is due to the knowledge and cult of my chidhood houses.”
Further information:
Javier Gallego Roca
Department of Architectural Constructions
University of Granada
Phone numbers: 958 240813 and 958 246304
E-mail: arqui9@azahar.ugr.es
