Editorial | Number 25

In this issue of the magazine Estudos Prévio – TWENTY-FIVE – we are pleased to publish an interview with the Paraguayan architect Solano Benítez, carried out during his visit to the Autónoma Department of Architecture as tutor of a Vertical Studio, an initiative which takes place annually and gathers all the students in teams which include members from the 1st to the 5th year, who are challenged to develop a project launched by the tutor, always an external guest. Solano Benítez spoke to us about the context where he lives and explained how he has been experimenting and researching architecture through material, in particular bricks, and the way in which, through it, we can talk about society, politics, and the way of understanding the world. The challenge launched to students focused precisely on these aspects and proposed that, using bricks, they experimented freely to design and build their own projects. We thank doctoral student Andrea Salazar Veloz for reviewing the text.

As this is an emblematic number, 25, we decided to associate ourselves with the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April 1974 Portuguese Revolution. We challenged the architect and UAL professor, Inês Lobo, to invite authors from various disciplinary areas to share with us visions, articles and essays of their vision on the theme “The post-April city”. As a result, we publish a dossier with contributions from architecture, geography, anthropology, law, photography and landscape architecture. The authors wrote about the challenges of the April Revolution to a country, Portugal, a territory which was stagnant and underdeveloped, but also about how much has been done and what still needs to be done, not only to solve persistent problems, but to respond to the new challenges that have, in the meantime, emerged in the world. Being a topic impossible to exhaust, we believe that the contributions we publish constitute unique and current perspectives to better understand the past, present and future of the city and democracy in Portugal.

We also published four articles resulting from original research on representative 20th century architectural projects, still little studied: Delia Ioana Sloneanu presents an investigation about the residence for the Portuguese embassy in Brasília, by Ricardo Bak Gordon and Carlos Vilela Pike; Maria Ana Castro Caldas Aboim Inglez analizes the Pools of Bellinzona, by Aurelio Galfetti, Flora Ruchat-Roncati and Ivo Trümpy; Sofia Pinto Basto establishes a parallel between the book Venezia Minore and the project for the INAIL Headquarters in Venice, by Egle Trincanato; finally, Victor Beiramar Diniz investigates and analyzes Eduardo Anahory’s floating beach-pool-project in Estoril.

This issue also includes a book review by João Miranda on The substance of things, by José Adrião.

Interview

Solano Benítez

Drawing allows one to control scale, it is very different from Autocad and the computer. Nowadays, I have a healthy relationship with it. It was hard for me to see the first printers firing off drawings, but eventually I accepted that they were more perfect than drawn by hand. Today, I see this process as complementary – 3D and two-dimensional drawing – not least because the computer gives an absolutely unbeatable degree of rigor. Nonetheless, they both complement each other.”

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Journal estudoprévio . biannual publication . http://www.estudoprevio.net/ . estudoprevio@ual.pt
Property and financial support: Cooperativa de Ensino Universitário C.R.L . NIF 501641238
Director: Filipa Ramalhete . Editor: João Quintela . Editorial Production: Rodrigo Lino Gaspar and João Manuel Miranda
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