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Student Showcase: Universidade de Evora, Escola de Artes
               

 

 

THE DESIGN STUDIO IN THE TEACHING OF ARCHITECTURE II

"Urban Devices for the city of Évora II" aims to resume, in a post-pandemic situation, an exercise that had its first edition in 2019. Since that first exhibition, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education with a significant impact on learning. In response, a group of architecture professors based in European universities took what they considered an opportunity and came together around a new idea of thinking about teaching and learning in a "new normality" where "online" has become a simple tool for internationalizing education, motivating, and much beyond English teaching driven by ERASMUS students. Thus, the concept of international architecture teaching, UNIVERSITY of Universities [UoU], was born. It was within this framework that professors and students from the University of Évora participated in a two-week workshop, led by Évora, encouraging autonomy in decision-making and collaborative work with international Master's students in a pair relationship in which, in Évora, they would be "the eyes, skin, ears, nose, and mouth" of colleagues who, from a distance, could not capture the sensations of these unique public spaces. The final critic, with the participation of several professors from other architecture schools, was a moment of sharing, discussing themes, and presenting work developed in a dedicated and committed way, with surprising results. By presenting these eight proposals for the city, is also revealed the connection between architecture education and the community where MIA is inserted. The guiding principles of Project II value the safeguarding of the built historical heritage - cities, buildings, and public space - requiring the development of skills in observing and understanding, in order to propose interventions in the legacy of the past. Considering that most students are newly arrived in Évora and come from different cities, both national and international, the teaching methodology that was adopted at this stage of the course, seeks to integrate students through approaching different ways of seeing and feeling the city. The intercultural experience in this World Heritage environment will be found reflected in projects designed so that those who walk through the city can see and feel it. Exploring the concept of place-making in Évora, we aimed to use perception in defining a public space for chill out and socializing, to experience and understand the identity of the city, making the creativit use of common spaces easier while considering the physical, cultural and social identities that define a place and contribute to its enjoyment. The objectives and strategies outlined to introduce the topic of architecture pursue Bruno Zevi's idea of "knowing how to see", in an teching way that explores concrete reality in time andse space. Évora, a World Heritage City (1986) and future European Capital of Culture (2027), is in the process of implementing a cultural strategy for the city, presenting an opportunity for collaboration with the academy , where young students can study and reflect on the identity of Évora, propose temporary socio-cultural interventions in public space, and therefore contribute to this demanding and challenging project. Engaging the local community in any cultural program involves providing them with first-hand cultural experiences of their own city, so we share the secret desire that some of these proposals may be implemented in the context of this initiative.

FOLLIES

The term "Folly", translated as "urban device", has been widely used in architecture without a specific function in many european countries , particularly after its use by Bernard Tschumi in 35 structures in the Parc de La Villette (Paris, 1980s). More recently precedents can be found in the Gwangju Folly project where such devices were arranged in the public space of that city (South Korea, since 2011) and more recently in the devices found in Rotterdam (Netherlands, 2018) in response to the motto "from a different perspective, look at the city that you are part of". By providing different perspectives of these places, they defined spaces available to be explored, offering different sensations, directing attention to certain elements, and allowing for a pause in the fast movement of those who live in the city but do not experience the city. Therefore, "urban follies" are presented as critical tools to question the condition of public space, serving as a motto to explore form, limits, and space, not defining a specific function, but rather a space for pause, contemplation, and enjoyment. The challenge of conceiving temporary spatial structures that allow for a different perception of the identifying elements of the place seeks to create new meanings for a transitional urban space, where one does not stay but moves, indifferent to what defines and characterizes it. That was how the challenge was launched to the students: to design an urban device for one of two urban spaces in the historic city of Évora. They should relate the urban device to the nearby and/or distant context, their use and exploration should be attractive and inviting as a way of involving the local population and visitors, contributing to the knowledge of the place. Eight responses to this exercise are presented, which had the particularity of starting in an international group that worked online with our students from the University of Évora, and some foreign students continued the work, developing the proposal for its presentation in this exhibition. "Urban Devices for the City of Évora II is the second temporary exhibition of works made by first-year students from the Integrated Master's in Architecture program at the University of Évora on the theme of Follies. The presented works were developed in the context of the international workshop UoU (University of Universities) in the Curricular Unit Project II and resume, in a post-pandemic context, the exhibition of works by newly arrived young people at the University that began in 2019, pre-pandemic. This exhibition has as a subtitled “Follies for Praça do Sertório and Largo do Chão das Covas”, in reference to the objective of recognizing the identity of public spaces in this historical city, where culture and social interaction happen. A selection of 8 proposals for urban devices is presented, which demonstrates that it is possible to create moments of pause in the public spaces of a city where the constant movement of those who live and visit often forgets the enjoyment and extended appreciation of its simplest values.

PRAÇA DO SERTÓRIO (3)

This square, located in the Historic Center of the city of Évora, owes its name to the Roman general Quintus Sertorius who vanquished much of the Iberian Peninsula in the 1st century BC. As one of the main public spaces within the city walls, Praça do Sertório is characterized by the diversity of buildings constructed throughout the history of the city itself. In this square, the rectangular shape that defines its layout is limited by a series of manor houses, religious and public buildings, notable for their architectural quality, suclarh as the Church and the  Watchtower that integrated the Convent of Salvador do Mundo (17th century), and the façade of the former College of S. Paulo on the north side; the 19th century building of the City Hall rebuilt on the site of the former palace of the Counts of Sortelha, previously raised on the ruins of the Roman baths on the east side; and also the current service building characterized by the neo-Joanine façade carried out in the plan of improvements of the Estado Novo (1933-1974) in a former noble house, on the west side.

The square defines an urban void, designed from the confluence of sbreeveral streets of the medieval structure of the city, whose final design dates back to 1942, the year in which Rua da Olivença was opened to build the Correios Building that demolished a large part of the Convent of Salvador do Mundo, already classified as a Public Interest Property in 1922.

The pavement of the current square was intervened at the beginning of the 21st century, with the application of paving stones and granite slabs, planting of trees, installation of benches, and the set of fountains located on its major axis that values the hydraulic heritage of the city of Évora. The sensory reading of this place provided proposals for Follies that interpret the movement and provide a pause in this space.

LARGO DO CHÃO DAS COVAS (5)

This public space is located in the Mouraria, north of the Praça do Sertório, an identitarian area from the medieval period of the history of Évora city that reflects, in its spatial organization and architecture, the primary influence of the Muslim population that back then resided there. This Islamic root is reflected in the formal characteristics, colors, lines, and volumetric relationships of a type of modest housing, contrasting with what is observable in Praça do Sertório. The character and identity of this urban space are defined by its boundaries. To the southwest is the most significant and identary hydraulic engineering work in Évora: the Cano Real da Água da Prata, originally designed by the royal architect Francisco de Arruda and classified as a National Monument since 1910. This is a 16th-century structure of Renaissance and Mannerist typology, which in this section takes the form of a perfect archway with an 18th-century fountain that supplied water to the Mouraria and Aviz neighborhoods. To the northeast, the Casa da Balança (Metrology Museum) stands out, a place for validating the reliability of measurement systems. The remaining boundaries are defined by residential buildings. The square contains medium-sized trees on the periphery of a rectangular central platform, where some benches enhance the character of stay and enjoyment. Small fairs and markets of local small farmers were traditionally held here, selling their fresh products until the mid-20th century. In fact, food finds an ancestral relationship here, and although recent excavations (2016) did not confirm the indication suggested by the toponymy - the existence of silos in the soil - it would have been a place for the preservation of cereals in deposits buried here. The space, boundaries, aqueduct, and toponymy provide suggestive proposals for Folies for Largo do Chão das Covas.

Expositive Project

The exhibition "Urban Devices for the city of Évora II" takes place in the Church of Salvador located on the North side of Sertório Square. The Church building belonged to the former Convent of Salvador do Mundo, occupied by the Clarissan nuns, consecrated in the year 1610 and extinct at the end of the 19th century, following the expulsion of Religious Orders in Portugal. In addition to the Church building, the original convent structure also includes the Mirante Tower and part of the cloister, and the whole complex has been classified as a Property of Public Interest since 1922. The exhibition "Urban Devices for the City of Évora II" is the result of an exercise carried out by ten groups of students in the Project II Curricular Unit Workshop, have been elected, through a voting process, the best proposal for the organization of the space and contents. After this first phase, all students were invited to participate in the development and production of the exhibition, organized according to different tasks, such as museography, museology, and communication. The museography project was responsible for designing the exhibition, conceiving the organization of the exhibition circuit and the spatial organization of all available physical supports that compose the exhibition: the location and orientation of the tables that support threedimensional models, drawings, photomontages, and descriptive memories; the location and arrangement of the plinths that support the screen and information support panels, and the location and position of the lamps that illuminate all supports. The museology project was responsible for organizing the materials resulting from the intense international workshop and the elements subsequently developed in the proposal development process, such as models, technical drawings, sketches, descriptive memories, etc. The arrangement of the contents seeks, simultaneously, to give a pedagogical sense to the exhibition, addressing the gaze of the visitor, accentuating the fundamental and also leaving an open space for interpretation. The communication project consisted of the preparation of new contents made expressly for the exhibition, bearing in mind an effective communication with a non-specialized public, notably in the elaboration of texts, models and drawings at other scales, and photomontages. The videos produced during the exercise were also edited, and the promotional and publicity contents of the exhibition were produced in the form of posters and brochures. Clarifying the adopted working method, it is also important to highlight the attention, from both students and teachers, to the Sustainable Development Goals promoted by the United Nations, namely the environmental sustainability related to the life cycle of materials. In this regard, efforts were made to promote, on one hand, the reuse of all exhibition support elements and, on the other hand, the future recycling of all materials produced for the content. It is also worth noting that materials from non-renewable sources, especially plastics, were rejected. The exhibition is organized into three sections: the entrance, which announces the exhibition and welcomes visitors, and is materialized by a framing panel and a screen showing images collected and produced by students about the intervention spaces; the exhibition itself, is organized into two sections: the Sertório Square section, formalized by tables arranged lenghtwise in relation to the axis of the church, and located roughly below the balcony attached to the church choir; and finally, the Chão das Covas Square section, with tables arranged in the opposite direction of the ones on the first section, located in the nave space.