The Pedagogical Value of the Organisation of Space. Founding Role and Continuity of Fernando Távora’s Thinking

Abstract

The importance of Fernando Távora’s text, Da Organização do Espaço, is recognised in the context of Portuguese architectural culture, but not yet fully investigated internationally. The contribution aims to define the background within which the text was born and published and, more generally, to relate the peculiar condition of this book to the more articulated framework of experiences, relations and ties that characterise the multifaceted figure of the Portuguese master. The circumstances in which the young architect and lecturer found himself at the time of writing this theoretical reflection and the influences coming from his activity in the international sphere are analysed in depth. The intention is therefore to reread the theoretical reflection, rooting it on the one hand in the design experimentation carried out by Távora, and on the other hand in the definition of the pedagogical model that made the School of Porto celebrated. This to relate the specific experience of this book to the contemporary condition of teaching in schools of architecture, recognising in it an interpretation of strong topicality, alternative to the dominant tendencies of sectorialisation of architectural teaching and practice.
The humanistic basis of architecture, therefore, is understood as the possibility of anchoring the discipline to a concept of culture understood in a broad sense, which calls architects to their responsibility in giving substance to common aspirations. The nexus between the organisation of space and its rootedness to place, a repository of material heritage and immaterial memories, translates the tension between nature and artifice through the synthesis of the architectural project.