HUGO FARIAS

In this context, Architecture refers to construction itself, from project genesis, to ideas and functional systems, to spatial organization, composition, language and tectonics. Naturally, it also incides on the themes of project, the poetics of space, the game between light and shade, and the sense of order. In this domain there is particular attention to housing and research on the new paradigms of inhabitation.

Architecture of the City refers to the thematic of urban design, public spaces, building typology, layout and, in particular, to structure and urban form; that which Aldo Rossi called the "discourse of urban facts" and where 'urban project' by Phillippe Panerai, is included, bringing in the different domains of Urbanism. Architecture of the Place refers to two themes: the 'sense of place' from the perspective of semiotics, with references such as "genus loci" and the "art of place" by Norberg-Schulz, and the 'garden' as a cultural expression.

Refer to all matters inherent to the materialization of the building. In particular, research will focus preferentially on non-conventional technologies, responding to new paradigms of the 21st Century, namely addressing new materials that will promote research of new construction systems.  Research is particularly directed to two key elements: rehabilitation in consolidated urban contexts, and housing development in emerging nations. The first, related to urban rehabilitation, requalification and conservation, and the latter on low-cost housing construction.

The 21st Century has seen a proliferation of events that require a response at the architectural level. The specificity of these issues has opened up research opportunities, in part already sedimented, that refer to a very specific and unique research theme of short-lived construction integrating architecture. Scenography refers to a broader context of reesearch that emerged from theatre, and then grew into television and cinema - among other mediums - and that justifies the separate degree offered by the Lisbon School of Architecture of the Universidade de Lisboa.

Refers to two levels of approach: Conservation focussed on research on methods and techniques, whereas Rehabilitation takes on a more generic and normative character. Conservation is indisociable from building techniques, intersecting  with the Technologies domain.

Representation and formulation includes a vast area of matters refering to project practices that, by their specificity, are not included in other research strands. Visualization and representation are practices with specific characteristics, referring to a logical-deductive activity, and to the mobilization of more inductive and sensitive fields - according to what is represented or given to visualize - and that establish a kind of non-verbal visual communication, aligned with the thinking process and project formulation.

As such, in this research strand we will find research that refers to the visualization and representation in project, seen from a broad perspective, from Drawing to Computing, while going through all the geometric processes of thought, and the study of cognitive and artistic processes that unleash the communication phenomena. Included here are the theorising and histography of everything that is Representation and Formulation referred to in these fields of knowledge.