Events

September Membership Meeting - Traveling Fellowship – Place, Identify, and Adaptive Reuse in Portugal

When: 9/12/2024 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Dialogues: Place, Identity, and Adaptive Reuse in Portugal
2024 Traveling Fellowship Program -- Cameron A. Avery

Throughout its history, Portugal has been influenced by various cultures. Initially, the Lusitanians,
followed by a Roman occupation that brought Latin culture and language, which then gave way to
Moorish rule. Later, Portuguese culture emerged, blending elements of European, Moorish, and African
influences into what some today will classify as the Portuguese identity. These multi-layered aesthetics
can be found in the food, the music, and mostly the architectural qualities of Portuguese spaces.
Throughout that same history, the country has seen its fair share of monumental shifts to its urban fabric,
from natural disasters such as the earthquake of 1755 that devastated Lisbon and forced reconstruction
and adoption of new construction techniques to modernization projects that looked to revitalize
economic growth throughout Portugal. What these many shifts have in common is that government
officials, urban planners, and architects were all forced to reckon with the many layers that make up the
"Portuguese identity" and how they chose to interact with it architecturally as they built anew.

The dialogue that starts to come to fruition throughout the country can be summarized by what architect
Fernando Tavora calls Portugal's "third way in architecture," which he describes as being characterized
as an innovative reinterpretation of tradition: modern principles -- such as spatial fluidity, curtain wall
glass façades, and architectural promenades -- introduced while respecting the pre-existence landscape
and character by integrating vernacular design principles and construction techniques.

The use of this "third way in architecture" or adaptive reuse throughout the country showcases unique
visual and spatial dialogues within the built environment that are created by the reconciliation of historic
and contemporary structures. Reconciliations that are layered upon by various cultures, traditions, and
moments of time. A level of heterogeneity that, in ways, unify the layers of the past and present.

One example of this dialogue can be found in the Carnival Arts Centre by José Neves. Once a ruined
slaughterhouse and disabled quarry that accentuated the identity and sense of place in a marginalized
community within Torres Vedras, Portugal, now offers a plaza that establishes new vitality to the urban
fabric. Here, the "third way in architecture" mentioned by Tavora comes into play with the simplicity of
modern forms engaging with the vernacular language of the old slaughterhouse and the environmental
context of the quarry.

But how do these interventions affect place and identity? As economies change and the lives of
buildings come to an end, communities are forced to reckon with the preservation, restoration, and
adaptation of their sense of place through the built environment. Leading to the question: How do
architects build synergy between the historical and contemporary through form and space that
continues the cycle of place driving identity and identity driving place? A heterogeneity that
possibly begins to interpret a new "Portuguese identity."

To address this question, I will visit ten adaptive reuse projects across Portugal that specifically look at
how the historical and the contemporary meet. Each of these projects spans different initial building
types transformed into newly implemented programs and exhibits different variations and depths of
adaptive reuse that will provide a wide range of examples of how architects across Portugal have
addressed this architectural dialogue. The study of the spatial dialogues of adaptive reuse in
Portugal will provide a greater context for the forms and strategies of reuse in my work and bring lessons
back to Charlotte and the SoA to develop more compelling and authentic reimaginings of dialogues with
historic structures and how the built environment in Portugal and North Carolina can drive cultural
constructions of identity. Understanding these concepts will enhance my goal of becoming an architect
who will work on large and small art, cultural, and civic buildings and installations that either exist as
adaptive reuse projects or as new constructions that exist within a historical site context.

The outcome of this research will be a series of analytical images, film and stills, and sketches that will
explore the encounters these projects have within the context of their structural and cultural identities
and the contemporary interventions brought on by architects and designers across Portugal. This work
will expand the library of images in the Society of Architectural Historians' SAHARA database, as well as
with my fellow SoA cohorts as helpful precedents for addressing place and identity through adaptive
reuse.