Architect Iván Bravo, from the Chilean studio of the same name, will present the conference 'OBRA/OBRA' as part of the cycle 'Matter: the white conferences'.

The session is scheduled for March 7, Thursday, at 6:30 pm, in the Fernando Távora Auditorium - FAUP.

Iván Bravo will be introduced by architect Nuno Melo Sousa.

Conference synopsis

Under the title 'OBRA/OBRA', Iván Bravo will reflect on the identity of the studio's practice, while presenting a set of recent works associated with the theme of dwelling, on different scales, from the design process to the built result.

In the words of the studio:

'When faced with the classic question of how to define our studio, we have never really felt comfortable with grouping architecture, art, design and construction into a single answer. The obligatory distinction made when listing these four words does not account for the way we move between them, and establishes a hierarchy that in practice is continuously flowing. Some years ago we stopped to think about a subtle semantic curiosity in the Spanish language that graphs very well how we understood our practice. The word obra, rooted in the concept of work or labour, is used in almost all its idiomatic variants to refer to an artistic work. Be it pictorial, musical, literary or architectural as well, it means the realisation of a creative process carried out by an artist.Spanish is no exception, but this meaning coexists with the more common meaning of "building under construction". And on the contrary, the projects realised by an architect are rarely called "obra", but rather by the programme to which they respond: house, cabin, building. It could be said that, unlike other creative disciplines that are consecrated when they are realised as artworks, architecture is an obra, in its artistic sense, while is understood as an artefact under construction, an alive mechanism made of raw materials and ruled solely by structural constraints and building techniques'.

Iván Bravo is an architect with a master's degree in photography. The studio of the same name, which has been practicing since 2002, focuses mainly on small and medium-scale projects, in which materials and practices from different artistic disciplines are combined. Intersecting all the studio's projects, whether houses and pavilions or installations and curatorial exercises, is a deep interest in form and visual abstraction. By working with simple geometries and seeking sophistication in the most basic and traditional construction systems, the studio's work seeks to explore the plastic potential of the most common materials. Iván Bravo complements his studio practice with academic practice at different universities in Chile. His work has been presented at conferences in different South American countries and exhibited at the Architecture and Design Biennials in Chile and Buenos Aires. He has been published in the magazines Domus, Arquitetura Viva and Summa+, among others.ivanbravo.cl

Organization
Matter: conferências brancas – José Miguel Rodrigues | Helder Casal Ribeiro | Pedro Borges de Araújo 

Partnership
FAUP, Jofebar, Panoramah

Graphic design
Marta Ramos

The conference will be given in Spanish, without translation.

Program subject to change (without prior notice).

This event may be recorded and disseminated by FAUP through photography and video.FAUP does not issue attendance declarations or online attendance of the event.

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