BORN IN VIANA DO CASTELO IN 1993 LIVES IN PORTO
MASTER COURSE IN ARCHITECTURE FACULDADE DE ARQUITECTURA UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO PORTUGAL
on going
BACHELOR IN ARCHITECTURE FACULDADE DE ARQUITECTURA UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO PORTUGAL
Miguel Teixeira (00351) 91 592 61 96 migueljrteixeira@hotmail.com
2011-2014
When I was thinking about doing this collection of images and thoughts I found an opportunity to correlate all my previous works and more importantly a time to put my thinking path in relation. Doing so seemed a pause in action, as for instance when we step back from a drawing and find ourselves contemplating the consequences of our thoughts. And we compare it with that first sensation or idea we were pursuing, that was distorted into such a different form that we call upon ourselves to realize the real nature of what we want to seek. This constant reflection precedes all action, but also follows it. Because we have the urge to weight all factors of an action. Because the different proportions of a span alter completely an ambience we often find ourselves in the realm of experimentation and imagination. Those possibilities are what opens the way for new things - the renewed possibilities of significance. I came to a belief that architecture is a talk. A talk about approach and encounter. It could emerge of a method or keep afloat a notion of architectural history, a knowledge of rhythm and form, as well as a good comprehended view of construction, but that doesn’t give it a true value unless it leads to a richer and fuller emotional experience. It’s a talk that can’t go around in circles, surrounding the same idea, but on the contrary, it must be a maze full of turns and discoveries. This architecture is a result of the instinctive force of the time changing. Is driven by the desire to conquer the unknown and a belief that there is in each man the power of connecting with others based on the extent of their dissimilarity. Such force demands a permanent reinterpretation of values. It is known that all thought is circumscribed within a time and a place. And so, some aspects of what we encounter in a architectural problem at a given moment, what one might call technical demands (the number of chambers of a house, the characteristics of a site, etc.) could be regarded as a pretext, a synthesis of a space-time context, that we as thought use to reflect upon a much more ambiguous and generalized ideia - construction and living. As when one draws a house, he is not forgetting about the client or his needs but he is using his will to evoque a personal reflection between primitive shelter and its evolution till today’s complex dialog. A thought that here and there we see lost in translation, wether it’s regarded as a consumer product or a piece of a cultural elitism. It’s not new, many people have already discussed it, like J. Ruskin or A. Loos in defense of the anonymous and silent architecture of the small tribes and cities; an appeal for the essence we could feel in the homes made on the fringe of conventions or social status. A puritan position willing to oust everything that was accessory in order to meet the essencial. When we think about ancient architecture we’re stepping backwards, prior to the changes that industrial revolution caused in a certain balance of the production of objects or at least far from the rhythm of the technological man. Protection, comfort. Those are primal senses that habitation always had reflected upon. The ideia of feeling good arriving to a place of comfort or getting home sick when staying away for too long, should not those be the ultimate goal for an habitation proposal? Home is an escape from the paraphernalia that surround us. It means orientation, a time to rest upon a wall in the middle of an unconceivable vast. It can be like a fire in the winter at open air that gives us warm and allows us to dialog with the cosmos, or give us the sensation of belonging like the tender kiss of a beloved one. One day I entered the Pantheon and was one of those immediate sensations on which time stood still like the marble stone of the floor. I didn’t feel as a spectator or imagine myself using the temple (or tried too), it seemed i was lying there for I could not remember. So I sat down. And let the space be measured by my body, crossing my senses with the colors, the shadows and the forms once at all. It was at the same time wonder of time and place, an immediate vibrance that can only be felt with the soul. I couldn’t see it so I couldn’t draw it and I couldn’t touch it because It was beyond reaching… That is the play of architecture; the joint of the physical elements of existence and the clandestine reaction of the transcendental forces.
ANDREI TARKOVSKY STALKER, 1979
“Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it… In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction.” WALTER BENJAMIN
‌and that’s why architecture attends a very specific reality. Before being esthetic it is a confrontation of values; an interpretation. This confrontation is the architect’s will in time, a physical imposition born of his spirit, between his gesture and the nature of what he encounters. When we hear architects explaining their claim they often begin with a geographical condition, their interpretation of the place. As if it depends on the site for its validation. A invisible force that not only sight, touch or smell will confirm, but also nature will endorse.
Cultural Centre and Student Residence in Porto 2013-2014 Oriented by Madalena Pinto
In this forgotten terrain of Porto we encounter a difficult topography, most of it inaccessible by foot. It was in its time a place of living, where the industrial workers driven by low rents and free water made their homes. Now with recent constructions the scale of the little houses and their farms was lost. But still the path is polished by brute granite stones and the stream runs slow. That was the rhythm of forces, a tension between time that I wanted to be the tone of my thinking. Even before knowing by heart the project conditions or requisitions, that was my first intent: to endure time.
PAUL KLEE
ANCIENT SOUND, ABSTRACT ON BLACK, 1925
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ROBERT FROST
The Road Not Taken
The program contemplates an ensemble of two buildings, that could be functioning individually: a cultural centre for all publics and a residence whose main focus was a short accommodation for students. The intention of integrate both within the slopes of the valley, emphasizing the watercourse and the potencial paths dancing among the shadows and the trees, impelled me to develop them in the highest point of the terrain. The access was just possible by a narrow preexisted route and that was going to be the access for both buildings. And because of the clearly distinction between each building’s activities that access point was divided in two alternative paths. Two different paces. As a social space, the cultural centre tried to pull the preexisted route for its configuration and extend the memory of the urban tissue. In opposition, the residence, to be regarded as a shelter for tranquility and stillness, tries to isolate itself from this whirlwind and opens up towards the quietness of the valley.
EDUARDO CHILLIDA LUIS PEĂ‘A
PLAZA DE LOS FUEROS, 1979
PABLO PALAZUELO COMPOSICIÓN,1960
Right after the descent, the bar with the terrace mounted in front of the river appeals to the discovery of the interior space. At the entrance, the glass of the windows and doors welcome us into the foyer. The exterior space serves itself as a waiting space for the events of the auditorium. From there a staircase can leads us to the tranquility of the valley. Although this proximity to this social space, the cultural centre doesn’t allow the garden to expose itself too much by the lack of openings towards it. The lower floor reforces this ideia of an introvert space. Both the exposition room and the multipurpose room are bound to the senses and to impressions. As if we were in plato’s cave wondering what is going outside and just can see the play between light and shadows, between dim light and overly-exposed forms, that guides us through space.
The residence lives by the white of the walls in contrast with the wood color of the furniture, pavement and window’s frames and by the rich view of each division that expose the valley’s equanimity. That’s when we know that the valley belongs to the living. When by the opening of the wooden blinds someone is thinking about it. And steps into the slopes to touch the trees beneath the shadows and through the permanent murmur of the falling water into the tank; it’s an almost tectonic presence. “We wake up early, we open the window, we watch the objects under the indecisive light of the albe. Watching them transform into vestiges of a mysterious time that is going to come.” AL BERTO
A CASA DESABITADA
Nautical Centre
in Porto 2015-2016 Oriented by Raquel Paulino
Between two rivers that flow into Rio Douro, where Porto meets his outskirt, lays a forgotten terrain where once an industrial building flourished. It is almost unrecognizable, and in their vicinity we see others victims of this reality. Although many pass by here, using the road that goes through it, the area is malnourished as the abrupt end of sidewalk by the river can testify it. My first thought was to distinguish the two distinct portions of the site. While in the part further south I wanted to work it as a continuation of the walk by the river, as a permeable landscape, that gains with the contact with the water; in the other I wanted it to dialog with the urban and industrial environment. The program was divided in three major functions: one to work as a nautical school in contact with the river, focused in the practice of rowing; a second with a cultural purpose that includes an exposition, an auditorium and a room mainly for sports fairs; and a third incorporated in tower with a residencial purpose to receive some athletes.
The first limitation was the movement of the tide, that required me to solve the problem of the athlete’s transportation of the rowing boats, from the warehouse into the water. I played with it to create a exterior triangle space where athletes, in low river level, could warm-up before walking to a floating platform in the south bank and enter in the water. When the level rises, this space will be flooded and the athletes can enter directly in front of the warehouse. In order to help the boats get to the river level or be saved in the warehouse there is a ramp in front of the main building. Its location grants its identity as well. The building takes form by livingness. One cannot identify its function for its appearance but by the mundane activities that are expected, as the transportation of the boats from the street. In other hand the rising of the water, until the upper part of the nautical centre appears to be floating like a vessel, which helps to give its character.
RAIMUND ABRAHAM
THE HOUSE WITH CURTAINS PROJECT, 1972
KARL FRIEDRICH THIELE ALTES MUSEUM, 1835
Connected to the platform, we find the bottom plan in which all the activities relating to rowing are situated: the interior tanks, the bathrooms, the gymnasium, the bar and the classrooms. They are organized around a patio where action evolves it. For this more private area I wanted it to live by its own environment and light. So when you get to this floor, the first sight is the movement of the athletes, their energy streaming. For there you can join the group or go rowing in the river through the warehouse. The walls are just the necessary plans of pauses, and of successive encounters. Even between the interior rowing tanks and the gymnasium, the only thing separating both is a low glass of wall to block water for passing.
I didn’t want the exhibition to be confined within a closed room so I thought of it as a permeable circuit that goes around the auditorium, the audiovisual room and the multi-use room. By a glass box configuration it exposes the space to the water stream, to the nautical school activities and to the motion of the street. The privacy is found in the interior compartments that turn their backs to the road by the walls that rise from the bottom.