Chronicles

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.

Oslo Architecture Triennale (OAT) (OAT) opened in early September bringing to Oslo an internationally mobilized architectural community of practitioners, thinkers and academics. Gathered via a curatorial open call won by the After Belonging Agency – Luís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, Ignacio G. Galán, Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Alejandra Navarrete Llopis and Marina Otero Verzier – so to survey and display the proposed curatorial subject: “After Belonging – the objects, spaces and territories of the ways we stay in transit”. It presents two large exhibitions – “On…

People can sit beautifully also on a stone....

Dust, weather, silence and sound, rust and air are for Jonathan Hill perceived absences of matter that nevertheless physically constitute architecture. In his fascinating book 'Immaterial Architecture' he plays this model of an architecture that grows from the insubstantial, against the modernist house, which he deems consistent, self-contained, waste-free. Transparency and light, which impersonate modernism, are for him a paradoxical camouflage – a solely visual device – meant to insulate and prevent the transmission of the building's self-sufficient…

The Anatomy of the Architectural Book is a new publication by André Tavares offering deep insight into the thinking, practices, and labours behind publishing architectural books, spanning from the period before the invention of the industrial press and the massive aftermath of Johannes Gutenberg’s invention, to the modern approach to architectural publishing. To address the birth and life of the disciplinary tradition of architectural book production is necessarily a slow and lengthy archival task. However, it can be also a highly inventive endeavour, as the grounds were to be set before the writing of this new…

In 2004 Pedro Gadanho and Luís Tavares invited me to participate in the exhibition of the official Portuguese representation at the Venice Biennale: Metaflux: two generations in recent Portuguese architecture.  Despite being comfortably over the age of the “X” or “Y” generation, I joined the group of artists and architects (Augusto Alves da Silva, Didier Fiuza Faustino, Nuno Cera + Diogo Seixas Lopes and Rui Toscano), and created an installation specifically for the event – the “Projecto Romântico”.

Responding to the general subject of the Venice Architecture Biennale – Reporting from the Front – an interesting group of pavilions by countries from (new) Eastern Europe radically explore questions that are specific to their nationalities, architecture and territory. These explorations have given them visibility, and perhaps, international determination, while they attempt a new understanding and approach to the potential of the participation of small countries in the giant international event that is Venice.

Chronicles is the space where J—A publishes short opinions and critical reflections about contemporary themes related with architecture and its large relationship with the society.

We will select contributions with 500/800 words that can be illustrated. If you’re interested in collaborating to this section please send a brief proposal explaining the theme to ja@ordemdosarquitectos.pt, and we will contact you.