OASE92

Nelson Mota focuses in his contribution on the work of Portuguese architect Fernando Távora (1923–2005), most notably the elementary school that was located at the core of the new Cedro neighbourhood, a former estate, the Quinta do Cedro, which was urbanised in Gaia, a city on the south bank of the Douro River, opposite to Porto. Mota explains how Távora’s breaking of the myth of modern beauty as an untouchable, immaculate white virgin architecture thus overcomes the dichotomy between preserving the originality of local cultures, on the one hand, or nourishing the demands of the masses, on the other; a duality between designing a teacup or a motorcycle. For Távora, the main task was searching for a synthesis between modernity and the vernacular, not in a Virgilian Arcadia, though, but in reality, in the circumstances, in the challenges to the organisation of the space brought about by the revolt of the masses.