Again and again we want to juxtapose public space against private space in a simple opposition: we want to say that public space is the opposite of private space and then once and for all formulate a definition of public space on the one hand and private space on the other. But pure public space and pure private space don’t exist, we can’t even hope that we might be able to imagine, to invent or to design pure public or pure private space. Pure public space (and as a matter of fact pure private space) is like Hydrogen: a chemical element that does not exist in an isolated form, it always forms compounds. Space always has…

Architectonica Percepta: Texts and Images 1989-2015, by Paulo Providência with photographs by Alberto Plácido, was published at the end of 2016, by Park Books, a Swiss publishing house for architecture and related fields. Providência is a Portuguese architect and Professor of Architecture at the University of Coimbra whose work is deeply rooted in enduring research that goes beyond the rigid nomenclature of the discipline of architecture and aims to incorporate an introspective reflection out of the close connections with other disciplines, namely philosophy, art, anthropology, among others. This singular…

The newsworthiness of the fire that this summer struck Madeira was not the damage caused (in 2012 the devastation was also great) but the fact that the flames threatened the old walled area of Funchal. For some hours the downtown area of the city was enveloped in an unbreathable mass of air, spreading panic among the population.