MODERNISMOS DO SUL / SOUTHERN MODERNISMS (EXPL/CPC-HAT/0191/2013)
2014-2015
PRESENTATION
This project explores the possibility of a critical revision of early modernism’s prevailing definition – its stylistic focus, its formalist and anti-representative bias, as well as its autonomic assumptions; or, as far as architecture is concerned, its functionalist credo – through the hypothesis that Southern European modernisms were committed to their entrenchment in popular culture (folk art and vernacular architecture) in a way that anticipates some of the premises of what would later become known as critical regionalism (Feivre e Tzonis, Frampton).
It is our purpose to explore a research path that parallels key claims on modernism’s intertwinement with bourgeois society and mass culture (Clark, Crow), by way of questioning the idea that there is but one kind of aesthetically significant regionalism – the kind that resists colonization by international styles and is supported by critical awareness – and that it occurred in the context of postmodernist architecture.
This research project is set up on the basis of case studies drawn from Spanish (specially Catalan), Italian and Greek contexts, even though Portuguese modernism of the first three decades of the 20th century is the centerpiece for questioning the initial hypothesis.
Principal Investigator Joana Cunha Leal
Proposing Institution Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (FCSH-UNL)
Participating Institution Cooperativa de Ensino Superior Artístico do Porto (CESAP)
Research Units Instituto de História da Arte (IHA/FCSH-UNL) Centre de Recerca Polis – Universitat de Barcelona (CERPOLIS/UB) Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo (CEAA/ESAP-CESAP)
Consultants Ana Tostões | Chair of DOCOMOMO International CV Mercè Vidal i Jansà | GRACMON (Grup de Recerca en Història de l'Art i del Disseny Contemporani) - Universitat de Barcelona CV Michelangelo Sabatino | College of Architecture | Illinois Institute of Technology CV Nikos Daskalothanassis | Athens School of Fine Arts CV Raquel Henriques da Silva | Instituto de História da Arte, FCSH-UNL CV
Funding Project funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (€37,296.00)