Architect Ana Luísa de Sá's doctoral public exams will be held on October 18th, Wednesday, at 3pm, at the Sala Plana.

The thesis is entitled Arquitectura e Experiência. Museu de Serralves e Casa da Música. Siza, Koolhaas, e os outros.

Jury

Doutor Carlos Manuel de Castro Cabral Machado (President)
Professor Associado da Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Doutor João de Lima Mendes Ribeiro
Professor Associado da Universidade de Coimbra

Doutor Francisco Manuel Gomes Costa Ferreira
Professor Auxiliar da Universidade do Minho

Doutor Marco Ginoulhiac
Professor Associado da Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Doutor José Miguel Neto Viana Brás Rodrigues
Professor Catedrático da Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Abstract

"The thesis hereby presented stems from a particular understanding: architecture, ‘cosa mentale,’ deeply intellectual exercise and externalization of thought, like any art — art, therefore, in which it’s included here —, all of which ‘mental things,’ not least resulting from, and leading to embodied experience (and new thought).

Circumscribing the boundaries of this thesis, through words about Siza borrowed from William J. R. Curtis and weaving into them the second author attended in this thesis: “As with any architect of interest, it serves little purpose to slot Siza’s [and Koolhaas’s] work into historical or critical pigeonholes. It is better to look closely at the buildings themselves, to consider the problems they address, the intentions and ideas behind them, and the formal language and materials which they use to pursue their aims.”

Hence, a deliberate gaze directed at the Museu de Serralves and the Casa da Música is proposed in three chapters, ‘Perceptions,’ ‘Intentions,’ ‘Appropriations,’ three ‘tempi,’ three times gazing each one, Museu and Casa, prisms rotated in hand, dynamic observation of the refraction of light. Although these projects came out in sequence, in real time — and could, thus, be so presented — Museu and Casa alternate within each of the three chapters. Each chapter is divided into two halves, as sub-chapters dedicated to each of them.

This thesis is, thus, a comparatist study between Álvaro Siza and Rem Koolhaas, through the Museu de Serralves and the Casa da Música, expanding more granularly on the intricacies of architecture and (its) experience, stretching from the authors’ thoughts to that of others, the latter of which emerge from contemplating the oeuvre of the first — and what, of this invisible and ineffable elusive, longitudinal and multifaceted ‘experience,’ can one, through them, see and say (and speculate)."
— Ana Luísa de Sá

Advisor
José Miguel Rodrigues

Co-supervisor
Juhani Pallasmaa [Aalto University, Helsinki]

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