1 Introduction

The understanding of the present time and the performance and responsibilities that the FAUP assumes in it - in the educational and pedagogical context and in the disciplinary field of architecture - will always be indebted to an extensive and consolidated past, even when reinventing new paths and destinies.

The values of tradition and innovation that the ‘Escola do Porto’ has carried throughout its history are a mark that ensures continuity and gives it a sense of identity.

This identity condition is also the result of an evolution that finds in the contribution of various teachers - regardless of their idiosyncrasies - the conformation of an idea of School.

2 Objectives

It is in this context that the Vozes Vivas (Living Voices) research project emerges, complementing other actions already carried out or underway, incorporating the objectives of recording memory, preserving and disseminating knowledge, as well as helping to promote awareness of FAUP's identity.

The sense of being part of a school, the feeling of belonging to a group, of being in the continuity of a set of reference figures as architects, teachers, citizens and people, needs to be permanently maintained and strengthened.

3. Relevance

Initially attached to ESBAP, the size of the Oporto School allowed for easy, everyday contact between people. Evocations and memories of previous generations, or stories from everyday life, were told and circulated among the majority of teachers and students.

Transmuted into illustrations/lessons, news of trips, books, comments, cases from everyday life and even current artistic-professional-personal anecdotes gave rise to a broad, spontaneous and effective communication process.

In other words, it was a condensation of what was experienced which, both for its practical usefulness and for its personal and professional usefulness, contained and propagated civic, ethical and moral values.

The repetition of these moments, their dissemination and influence made it possible to share knowledge and wisdom, helping to build memory and group spirit: in other words, part of what contributed to making the school.

Today, the size of this institution is much larger and, consequently, day-to-day contact is less; making the informal transfer of knowledge more difficult and constraining.

Because current practices are different - different from those possible in a small school - making it difficult to transfer knowledge informally; because there are a number of people that the current generation of teachers knew well, but with whom the students were no longer able to have contact; because it is important to preserve these Voices and guarantee the extension and continuity of memory; because we also recognize the impossibility of memory remaining immune to cyclical and cultural fluctuations, it is recognized as essential (and urgent) to collect and disseminate the testimonies of former teachers who were paradigmatic in the construction of the “Porto School”.

In fact, the transmission of experiences between teachers and students, both professionally and personally, has become less evident. At the same time, we are witnessing a condition of successive and growing detachment from the institution on the part of key figures, and it is important to preserve a vast and valuable accumulated knowledge, perpetuating the memory in order to ensure that these Voices remain Alive.

This initiative, built above all on informal history revisited from oral histories by recording testimonies and conducting filmed interview(s), seeks to affirm - through the diversity of speeches and the crossing of attitudes and points of view - an overall vision capable of overcoming the singularity of each of the characters.

Thus, the sense of the collective is based on the idea of a “network” to which personal stories contribute, with a view to recording a legacy of knowledge that is decisively affirmed as a heritage asset that must be recognized and captured, and above all, shared and disseminated - among younger students, architects and the general public - giving visibility to an institutional memory that is also a collective and social memory.

In addition, this initiative provides and induces continuity in research, as it focuses on the production of unpublished material that can be further developed.

Team

Researchers

André Santos (Responsável)
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Maria José Casanova (Responsável)
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Helder Casal Ribeiro
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Luís Soares Carneiro
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Luís Viegas
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Marco Ginoulhiac
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Marta Rocha
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Rui Ramos
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Scholarship holders

Ana Filipa Sousa Capela (CEAU, ago-dez 2023)
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Ana Margarida Seixas Cavaco (CEAU, ago-dez 2023)
CEAU-FAUP, Portugal

Article/book chapter accepted for publication

Following oral presentations by researchers from the Vozes Vivas project at the International Congress A Global Campus: Universities, cultural transfers and experiences in the 20th century, held at the Complutense University of Madrid on November 22-24, 2023, two chapters were developed to be included in the book A Global Campus: Universities, cultural transfers and experiences in the 20th century, edited by Carolina Rodríguez-López (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain), to be published by Routledge and which will incorporate the scientific results of the Global Campus research project.

After positively receiving the book project based on the speeches presented at the conference and new contributions made by invitation, the publisher Routledge carried out a blind peer review process of the texts, and the book is expected to be published in 2025.

In this context, from the papers presented by the Vozes Vivas project researchers at the A Global Campus International Congress, two texts were developed and selected to be included as chapters in the book:

Chapter 6: Protagonists of an idea of School: cultural transfers and political action on the university campus of the city of Porto
Maria José Casanova and  Margarida Cavaco (Porto University, Portugal)
in A Global Campus: Universities, cultural transfers and experiences in the 20th century
Editor: Carolina Rodríguez-López (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain).
(Book Proposal acepetd by Routledge -  no prelo)

Abstract

Incorporating the meaning of 'School', simultaneously as a place, as a group of people, or as a tendency of thought and action, the present reflection seeks to explain elements that characterize the transformation of an Architecture education, originally shaped by the "Beaux-Arts" model, later passing through the approximation to the ideas of the Modern Movement and attempts at reforms during the Salazar dictatorship, until the consolidation of a (new) idea of School and integration into the University of Porto. During this evolution, a teaching (and practice) of reference was built, internationally recognized as "Porto School".

In the search to identify and define the identity that characterizes the institution and its teaching project, the investigation developed inner Vozes Vivas research project allows us to recognize and explore, throughout these periods, aspects that reflect different dimensions of school life, as a way of building a global portrait, somewhat succinct, of group activities and cultural, social and political interrelationships - which go beyond the limits of the school space, extending throughout the city.

Based on collected material and oral testimonies from former teachers of the Porto Architecture Course, reported by the protagonists of the various experiences and circumstances, integrating different narratives, this reflection and interpretation seeks to address the essential characteristics of a process of construction of an idea of collective, unified, but also multiple and plural. 

In the politically adverse context experienced in Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by major student movements of vindication, Porto’s Architecture Course emerged as a stage for this contestation. The politicization of the course caused it to be interrupted at various moments, and made itself felt internally in various ways, in heated discussions and debates, in direct contributions to demonstrations in the city, confrontations with the political police or artistic provocations. Along with the technical and political involvement in the SAAL- North Programme, much discussed within the School, all these politicized experiences marked the identity genesis of the Porto School.

Alongside a dense process of fieldwork, data collection, information processing and production of new visual and textual elements to enhance interpretation and communication, the choice to record personal testimonies through filmed conversation – giving an account of the individual and collective experiences of each character – places us, as researchers in the field of architecture, simultaneously in the field of Oral History. This choice is based on the conviction that personal stories are also a legacy of knowledge that affirms itself as heritage that needs to be recognized/captured/shared and disseminated.

(…)

Chapter 16: Cinemas, Theaters and Cafes: Memories and Cultural Life in Porto School
André Santos, Ana Capela (Porto University, Portugal)
in A Global Campus: Universities, cultural transfers and experiences in the 20th century
Editor: Carolina Rodríguez-López (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain).
(Book Proposal acepetd by Routledge -  no prelo)

Abstract

Evoking the memories of the characters imbued in the construction process of the Porto School, we sought to create a collective representation of the experiences that involve it. From the lessons with the professors to sharing with colleagues, the School tried to provide different dynamics between teachers and students and assume a leading role in the city's cultural debate. Through the organization and dissemination of extracurricular exhibitions, cultural events and gatherings, the School opened its doors to the outside and assumed itself as a space for dissemination, conducive to debate, to sharing, a point of intersection between education and culture.

“The sculpture, painting and architecture courses lived laboriously on an island of harmony that Master Ramos liked to call the Convent of S. Lázaro, a world within the world, an ordered refuge from chaos, a party in the shadows of fascism, where the political police were expected at the door by an unsuspecting director who defended the refugees, all free-thinkers, first and foremost, so they could be artists.”   (COSTA, Alexandre Alves – “À Memória Presente de Mestre Ramos”. In Introdução ao estudo da História da Arquitectura Portuguesa: outros textos sobre a Arquitectura Portuguesa, p. 79-80).

This reflection seeks to construct a vision of the Porto School, which, in its multiple readings and dimensions, transcends a merely physical or formal sphere, and reaches a symbolic sphere, as a stage for experiences, which, through different narratives, formed a collective and social memory. Thus, the aim is to portray what is believed to be a truly symbiotic relationship between education and culture, seeking to demonstrate how the characters of the School participated in so many different forms of learning, how they were inserted in an infinity of cultural forms of school life, and consequently of city life.

 The Porto School was full of moments in which its protagonists, students and teachers, encouraged by each other, nurtured experiences that took place in different spaces in the city, outside the school walls, such as cafes and restaurants where gatherings and debates took place, theaters and cinemas that fascinated them, associations and bookstores that promoted cultural meetings and events.

Therefore, as part of the Vozes Vivas Project, the aim is to record, document and give na account, through individual and collective oral memories, of the external nature of interpersonal relationships and experiences, which extend from the interior of the Porto School to countless spaces of the city of Porto, evoking the memories narrated by the group of characters who were involved in the construction process of the School's identity, centered mainly on a more social, informal, but, above all, cultural context.

Comunicações orais em conferência

CASANOVA, Maria José; CAPELA, Ana; SANTOS, André
Oral History of the Porto School: A Methodological Approach
“Narrating Lives”. International Conference on Storytelling, (Auto)Biography and (Auto)Ethnography . Universidade de La Valleta e online. London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (Org.) Malta, 26-27 Agosto 2023

SANTOS, André; CAVACO, Ana Margarida, CASANOVA, Maria José
Contributions of Vozes Vivas [Living Voices] for the Memory and Identity of the Porto School
“Narrating Lives”. International Conference on Storytelling, (Auto)Biography and (Auto)Ethnography . Universidade de La Valleta e online. London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (Org.) Malta, 26-27 Agosto 2023

CAPELA, Ana; SANTOS, André; CASANOVA, Maria José
FAUP: from the sharing of Individual Experiences to the Collective Identity.
“Narrating Lives”. International Conference on Storytelling, (Auto)Biography and (Auto)Ethnography.Universidade de La Valleta e online. London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (Org.), Malta, 26-27 Agosto 2023

CAVACO, Ana Margarida; SANTOS, André; CASANOVA, Maria José
FAUP: Records of (an) Oral Memory in the City of Oporto
“Narrating Lives”. International Conference on Storytelling, (Auto)Biography and (Auto)Ethnography. Universidade de La Valleta e online. London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (Org.) Malta, 26-27 Agosto 2023

CASANOVA, Maria José; CAVACO, A.Margarida; SANTOS,  André
Protagonists of an idea of School:  Cultural transfers on the University Campus of the city of Porto
International Congress A Global Campus: Universities, cultural transfers and experiences in the 20th century. Complutense University of Madrid.  Madrid,  22-24 novembro 2023

SANTOS,  André; CAPELA, Ana; CASANOVA, Maria José
Cinemas, theaters and cafes: memories and cultural life in Porto School
International Congress A Global Campus:  Universities, cultural transfers and experiences in the 20th century. Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid 22-24 novembro 2023

Orientação de Dissertações MIArq-FAUP

Em curso:

Salomé Martins Amaral, A Viagem de Arquitectura: entre a Vida e Profissão.
Porto: FAUP, Dissertação de MIArq  em curso, sob a orientação científica de André Santos (Orientador) e Maria José Casanova (Co-orientadora)

Concluídas:

Liliano Rafael Teixeira Ferreira, Prémio Fernando Távora. A viagem de investigação enquanto instrumento na formação do arquiteto
Porto: FAUP, 2024. Dissertação de MIArq apresentada a 12 de Novembro 2024, sob a orientação científica de André Santos (Orientador) e Maria José Casanova (Co-orientadora).
https://hdl.handle.net/10216/163351
Classificação 20 valores

Resumo:            
The act of traveling encompasses a significant component of learning, stimulated by the experience acquired through direct contact with other realities. Likewise, for the architect, it proves indispensable in their formation, serving as an irreplaceable method and instrument of investigation, fostering cultural growth and consolidating knowledge. Between Portugal and Japan, Fernando Távora (1923-2005) embarked on a series of journeys that contributed to his development as a person, teacher and architect. As a singular episode in his life trajectory, the journey undertaken in 1960 to the United States of America stands out, under a scholarship funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG), aiming to Study the Methods of Teaching Architecture and Urban Planning at prestigious American Universities and Institutions. As a posthumous initiative, the Northern Regional Section of the Portuguese Association of Architects (OASRN) honored the master and institutionalized his commitment to travel by establishing the Fernando Távora Prize in 2005, thereby consolidating Távora's methodological, pedagogical and cultural legacy. Unprecedented on the national scene, it annually awards a grant for a journey within the scope of a research project, with nineteen journeys proposed across nearly all continents thus far, whose themes either diverge or complement each other. From the awardees' testimonies arise intersections and coincidences in their own journeys, as well as affinities and dissonances in their methods of observation and communication, alongside the efforts and adversities inherent in physical travel. In this stance, the present dissertation aims to confront the heterogeneity of itineraries regarding their objectives, methodologies, and strategies set forth by a research journey, comparing the respective motivations and outcomes.

Ana Margarida Seixas Cavaco, Vozes Vivas da Escola do Porto. Entre pedagogias e vivências, a construção da ideia de Grupo na consolidação da Identidade
Porto: FAUP, 2022. Dissertação de MIArq apresentada a 14 de Novembro 2022, sob a orientação científica de André Santos (Orientador) e Maria José Casanova (Co-orientadora).
https://hdl.handle.net/10216/146307
classificação 20 valores

Resumo:            
Developed within the context of the research project Vozes Vivas, the dissertation focuses on the life of the Architecture Course at the Oporto' School from the point of view of two dimensions that simultaneously differ and complement each other. To the formal history of the Course, based on written and official records, and which corresponds to the evolution of pedagogies, study plans and teaching methods, a more informal and personal perspective is added, told by the characters, students and teachers, who lived and participated in these transformations. The oral history of the Course is told through its direct testimonies, in experiences, crossings and interrelationships that extend through the city, and, as a whole, conform a human sense of School. Thus, it is through the various evocations that an idea of Oporto' School is designed, based on a collective memory, a set of values and teachings, the joint action of a group that, in its unity, knew how to act and react, always between ruptures and continuities, constituting a guarantee of identity.

Ana Filipa Sousa Capela, Vozes Vivas da Escola do Porto. Entre estórias e partilhas, o contributo da Memória no reconhecimento da Identidade
Porto: FAUP, 2022. Dissertação de MIArq apresentada a 11 de Novembro 2022, sob a orientação científica de Maria José Casanova (Orientadora) e André Santos (Co-orientador).
https://hdl.handle.net/10216/147275
Classificação 20 valores

Resumo:            

Framed by the Vozes Vivas research project, the dissertation aims to approach and understand Memory's role in the process of acknowledgement of the Identity, based on a personal reading of a group of characters' testimony, whom integrated the Oporto School. Therefore, despite the uniqueness and specificity of each one, through the intersection of their discourses, witnessed from their experiences and past memories, a group vision will be sought after, which should be known and recorded. If each participant's identity was built from a path continuously suported by experiences between colleagues and professors, inside and outside the School, academically, professionally, socially or culturally, in other words, through their memories, then the Oporto School's Identity is also following a path of awareness. This process would be molded by external circumstances, by social, political and cultural contexts, but above all, molded by the personalities that gave it life, by their values, practices and interrelationships, by what they first acquired and later sought to transmit. Thus, wandering through their memories, one seeks to recognize the inseparability of each character's identity - witnessed by their participation and intervention, by their contributions - from the Identity of the Oporto School.