'Classroom, An Adolescent Look' is an exhibition curated by Joaquim Moreno, professor at FAUP, dedicated to "secondary school spaces that question the archaeology of classrooms in this cycle of education after the Second World War".

The exhibition is co-organized by Garagem Sul with the arc en rêve centre d'architecture, Bordeaux and the Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture, in Hasselt (where it will be on show from October 1, 2023 to February 4, 2024) and is a project co-funded by the European Union.

Among the projects on display, we would like to highlight the project for the Calouste Gulbenkian Conservatory in Aveiro, which was the subject of an academic paper by Maria Noémia Coutinho, a former student on the Architecture course at ESBAP, developed in 1966 as part of the CODA / Competition to Obtain an Architect's Diploma, entitled 'An art initiation school'. The building was designed by the architect Maria Noémia Coutinho with the architects José Carlos Loureiro and Luís Pádua Ramos between 1966-71.

"The project for the Calouste Gulbenkian Conservatory in Aveiro was commissioned to José Carlos Loureiro with the dual aim of decentralizing artistic education and bringing the arts together, bringing dance, music and the visual and performing arts together in a single secondary school. The commission transgressed the centralism of the specialized educational offer concentrated in Lisbon and broke down the walls between the different artistic disciplines. Maria Noémia Coutinho took the opportunity as the theme for her CODA in 1966. The countless forms of play illustrated by Brüghel in Jogos de Crianças (Children's Games) inspired the organization of the school*. The more public sector brings together the auditorium, the library and the large multipurpose room for ballet, chamber music and the exhibition gallery. The more private sector, organized around the cloister, includes a canteen, rooms for music, painting, sculpture and dance, and a common room with a suspended fireplace that was only lit on St. Martin's Day. The careful robustness of the materials (concrete, painted plaster, wood and terracotta tiles) meant that the school has survived to the present day without any major renovations. Although it lost its nursery school and became an articulated school, it still bears the marks of time: the worn floors and the tables in the art rooms with splashes of paint. It deserves to be classified and carefully restored so that it can continue to push its limits and ours."

Joaquim Moreno

CODA is part of the 'EBAP / ESBAP / Curso de Arquitectura' archive of FAUP's Documentation Center for Urbanism and Architecture and is available for online consultation at arquivo da FAUP no Portal dos Arquivos da U.Porto.

* From the thousand premises we have collected, we wanted to make a true synthesis. (...) I believe that, once again, the answer has been given. If we set out to answer, step by step, we'll look at an example from 400 years ago. In the painting by Brüghel that begins this work, we discover with dazzled eyes more than two hundred children (Brüghel's children who have the faces of men and women) playing the games that we see them playing today, in 1966. A long, long list. Jumping the axle, waving over barrels, blowing a bellows, spinning the hoop, playing marbles and pebbles, making processions, lining up for "the good boatman" and the "sad widow", setting up houses and altars, rocking dolls, getting their feet and clothes wet, peeking at hidden things, riding horses, slipping on shoes, climbing bars, walking on stilts; chasing animals, imitating wedding ceremonies, throwing a spinning top, hiding sticks in their hands, pushing themselves in the goat-cega, swinging their bodies, playing the drum, building toys out of sticks, twigs and feathers. Maria Noémia Coutinho, 'Uma escola de iniciação de arte', CODA ESBAP 1966, page 10.

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