POÉSIE LINÉAIRE: EXPLORATION DE L’OMBRE ET LA LUMIÈRE

POÉSIE LINÉAIRE: EXPLORATION DE L’OMBRE ET LA LUMIÈRE

BY AUDREY MARQUES, THOMAS CHEN, VIOLETTE CAIREY-REMONAY, ZOÉ MAILLARD

PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT ABOUT THE FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS DA UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO

Initially, we focused on the study of Hélène Binet’s work, to guide us in this practice.
Her work began with the use of different scales, and her poetic language around light inspired us. These lines of thoughts were the guide- lines on which we based the creation of this book. We made the choice to work with black and white, a binary vocabulary of color. We thought it was well suited to capture and highlight the straight geometry of the Faculty of Science. Furthermore, this choice allows us to lter parasitic information from the environment that would jump out too much with a high impact of color. Because we want to focus on the deep meaning of the photographs. We want to identify different atmospheres through the accentuation of geometry or the symbolic content of the photograph, without being impacted by the temporality emitted by the use of color, the effect of time. This use of black and white accentuates the work carried out on the poetics of light, with its play on light and shadow. And it highlights the vertical and horizontal lines of the building.

This place exhibits a straight architecture that is frozen in space. These guidelines are in contrast to the organic forms of the environment. Indeed, the Faculty of Science is located in a large park where vegetation is present. This parti- cularity of the place offers a counterexample to our line thoughts: in the strong geometry of the building, we encountered small imperfections such as air vents or technical ducts. These building components are neces- sary for the proper functioning of the latter and bring life in this rigidity. They appear as the organs of the building.

Its environment reveals a diversity of space, biodiversity and architecture. When dense vegetation comes into contact with the right architecture of the buildings, strong tones are accentuated on the image. The black and white showcases all the human constructions, all the buildings of the site. The relationship between two colors conveys the idea that everything is straight, ortho- gonal, geometric, in order, and in simple and pure shapes.

The walk was an important drive for our thoughts. We want to share with you this walk, where the out- door area is unveiled like a space lled with rich details and surprises. The orthogonal ensemble is part of a more chaotic natural en- vironment, which cannot be described simply by two colors. For this reason, we have chosen to punctually bring color to our photographs, in order to reveal all the diversity present in the outside space of the faculty.

This change concerning colors is a desire to illustrate the complex relationship that the site emits, between a building with strong lines and dense vegetation. When we en- counter the organic and intricate forms of the park, the use of color becomes important in order to illus- trate the dense vegetation.

THE ENGINEERING TONES: COMMUNITY, TRANSPARENCY, SYMMETRIES

THE ENGINEERING TONES: COMMUNITY, TRANSPARENCY, SYMMETRIES

BY CATARINA SANTOS, MARIA JOÃO FARIA, MARIA LUISA MESQUITA

This visual narrative intends to portray photographically the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, located in the Asprela pole and its direct/indirect relations between the exterior and the interior. It is a college of irregularly regular plan, because from its asymmetrical axis we can notice symmetries in the two wings that compose it. Firstly, the main building, with its 7 annexes, which face the street (creating, almost, a feeling of a wall for those who pass by). On the opposite side, the various engineering departments, apparently independent, are interconnected.

UPTEC IN WAITING: BETWEEN REALITY AND VIRTUAL

UPTEC IN WAITING: BETWEEN REALITY AND VIRTUAL

BY GIOVANY BICALHO, RENATO RIBEIRO, TÂNIA MARQUES

UPTEC is the meeting point between different disciplines, contexts and specialists. It is a space to risk, provoke, share, build and learn. UPTEC is a place for open-minded and highly qualified people to dream, create and develop a better future for us all." Due to the context currently experienced in Portugal and the world, with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, countless professionals and students, in confinement, have been forced to roll up their sleeves and find ways to continue working outside their offices and colleges which results in empty, seemingly abandoned buildings where only the necessary people roam. The idea of the present work seeks to document what this "meeting place" is, when there is almost no one to meet. How a space that is made to receive is felt, when there is nothing to give. In this way, the group chose to show their vision and feeling of the space during their visits to UPTEC, following a route idea that emphasizes the richness of spaces in this park of science and technology, consisting of two blocks in "L", which embrace and circumscribe, along with the new urban park and the landscape around the Hospital of São João, a wide meeting place.
Between reality...
Here we observe the occasional movements, which, to be sure, were once more agitated, of students, professors, and workers, who pass by on foot, far away, or in vehicles, from cars, buses, and even ambulances. UPTEC then borders the School of Health and this break between the two realities cannot fail to be noticed. First of all, it is evident that it is posterior to the School of Health, trying to seek altimetric relations with the latter, but the biggest difference consists in the idea of open space that UPTEC makes itself felt, opening up to the outside, not only as is evident in the courtyard, which maintains a strong visual relationship with the building thanks to its sheets of glass, but also on the façade parallel to the School of Health, where several openings can be seen, seeking a contained relationship with the outside, almost as if out of respect for the neighboring building, which closes in on itself, even resorting to the use of grids. These spaces of convergence become the most interesting spaces of this implantation. To emphasize this confrontation of worlds, the group decided to adopt Maros Krivy's false panoramic technique, forcing the breakdown of these two worlds, and even identifying a third one, in the background, the Asperela neighborhood. This, together with the Faculty of Psychology and Science of Education are in total confrontation with the park. If on one side the technology is highlighted by the existence of drones made from scratch, which are able to fulfill the idealized purposes, on the other side there are huge garbage bags on the edges of a very worn-out road. Here too, the photographer's technique reveals great astuteness, as the parts function not only as one, but mainly separately, almost as if they were pieces of a puzzle and could move from place to place. We are then forced, thanks to a white gate that hides a vacant lot, to return to the courtyard. We then decide to go around the building, finding ourselves in what looks like the back of the building, but where the main entrance is. This is marked by glass panels similar to those facing the courtyard, which makes us notice the transversality of that point. Looking up we notice an appealing balcony, and quickly want to enter and find out how to get there. Upon entering, we are confronted with a different reality.
different reality. The cold outside, enhanced by the glass and the concrete paneling, dissolves in the warmth of the wood in orange tones, which are replicated in the corridors of the east wing. And this is exactly why the group went to the right. Forced to climb the cold emergency staircase, where an interesting skylight appears, there we find a corridor without natural light and with room doors on both sides. At the end we see the long awaited balcony. We feel that it is a meeting space, that promotes a good break between colleagues, and that if in a pandemic context we saw 4 colleagues, how many would not see each other in a normal situation? Entering the West wing, we feel such a strong relationship with the courtyard, thanks to its long corridor facing outwards. New doors of new companies appear. New rooms, which present themselves in the same way - empty - in waiting.

FUNDAMENTALS . EXPLORATION . PLASTICITY . FEP THE PENCIL THAT DRAWS THE INVISIBLE

FUNDAMENTALS . EXPLORATION . PLASTICITY . FEP THE PENCIL THAT DRAWS THE INVISIBLE

BY ANTONIO MIGUEL LOPES, JOANA GONÇALVES, MIGUEL PINTO, TERESA MACIEL

The Faculty of Economics has been located, since 1974, at the Asprela Campus of the University of Porto, in the Northeast area of the city. It was, after the Faculty of Medicine, the first faculty to be installed in this University Campus. FEP occupies two buildings - the main building and the post-graduation building - set in a park of about 45000 m2.
The main building, designed by Architect Alfredo Viana de Lima, is a landmark in the history of modern architecture, and is characterized by a serene monumentality, that is, an impression of classical solidity that extends throughout the interior.
The building is recognized for its formal coherence and architectural quality, developing around the articulation of horizontally inclined volumes and interior courtyards. It combines geometric composition with the articulation of contrasting forms, alternating dense blind volumes with large glazed spans and horizontal elements with vertical elements. A vertical obelisk, by sculptor José Rodrigues, marks the main entrance to the building.
The Postgraduate Building, designed by architect Camilo Cortesão, was inaugurated in 2006. It is organized in three bodies connected on the upper floor by a gallery. The central body, where the main entrance is located, consists of two volumes organized on both sides of the gallery, opening to a patio that establishes the relationship with the main building. The two other bodies are elongated constructions, distributed by corridors perpendicular to the gallery.
The exterior space is clad in a vegetation cloak, stays, and circulation spaces. The vegetation is in the form of meadow, with the presence of various species of trees with a clear predominance of poplars, but including lichen trees, American oaks, wild plum trees, and birch trees, among others.
The interpretation of this space, which by its richness in terms of plasticity, texture, materiality, and light games, strongly felt in the ambulation and appreciation of the building, launch the three main motives for the construction of our narrative.
For this, it was important to relate the work of the photographer Alexandre Delmar entitled Seis Topogra as, in partnership with Luís Ribeiro da Silva for the production of the drawings that, allied to the photograph, appear as cues in which the drawing reveals the skeleton of the photographic composition. In this new analytical perspective, it was easy for us, future architects, to identify and underline the intrinsic relationship between drawing and photography, but also with architecture. And thus use drawing as the link from the real to the image, from architecture to photography, from three-dimensionality to the sheet of paper.
The levels of abstraction are intertwined as our four looks are cooked, but in a way they are related because innocence is also a form of coherence. In this perspective, the critical but also poetic interpretation of the spatial composition intersects the technical precision and the strong imagery, sometimes objectifying, other times dematerializing the volatile space. A compromise that results, on the one hand, in an enhancement of the abstract and optical qualities of the interior of buildings, adopting a vision close to certain formal concerns of contemporary landscape and interior space photography and that can be seen, for example, in the work of Lynne Cohen.