How do we interpret the changes in contemporary visual thought? One of the greatest difficulties rests in the fact that tendencies do not develop from one paradigm to the next.
Néstor Garcia Canclini. “Remaking Passports: Visual Thought in the Debate on Multiculturalism”, 1994.

The work of the architectural office of CLCS Architects (Alexandre Costa Alves, António Costa Alves and José Cadaval de Sousa) is not based on the existence or even the construction of an architectural paradigm, in the stylistic or ideological sense. Nor does it depend on the belief such a paradigm exists. But it is based on the possibility of a permanent recreation of collective images that become available as soon as they are detected. This formula condenses through juxtaposition.

Its work is in fact undertaken through a collage of impressions, experiences, memories, read phrases and textures that show through in the design as accumulations and excesses, and then transform, or better, manipulate themselves with a purpose leading to the choice of the individual objectives for each project: its program, its geometry, the space, the light, the constructive system, and the materials that will render it visible.

It is thus practiced in a world that, known to be diffuse, becomes clearer as the project develops, is concluded and is constructed. And it is always with the notion that the practice of architecture is orchestrated between the dream - the desire of the architect - and that which is executable - the reality moulded by the clients, the builders, the market, the construction industry, the socio-economic and cultural state of the country.

It is thus a work that concentrates upon the adversities of practising the profession so that these do not come to represent factors of immobilisation, but rather stimuli and a guarantee of realisation. Which does not always happen, because between the reflection a project demands and the needs of the client there often persist insurmountable hurdles that jeopardise the final result. But it is between advances and retrogressions that the way forward for the group is being constructed, and that principally, the indispensable experience and courage to proceed are being gained. It is thus a work of resistance.

The image as visual communication that an architectural work also propitiates upon immediate contact - that which precedes the actual use of its space - is, for this group, an important detail and even a project issue. Not only in a merely figurative or formal montage, but in defining the internal contents themselves.

First there is the three-dimensional design - complex, yet simultaneously interpretable and of value in itself - and subsequently there is the materialised building itself. Both are vehicles of that image that seeks to be strong. This can be seen in the design, by exploring the projection of the lines that signal the geometry, the thickness and the opacity of the planes that enclose the space. And it can be seen in the buildings, through the outline of the volumes and their distribution.

The building’s configuration reveals itself to be a narrative without being literary or restrictively post-modern. It expresses itself. It speaks to the observer. It shows a will to communicate, either through very narrow voids, flat planes elevated off the ground, salient volumes, or even almost smooth, glazed surfaces.

Between the fragmentation and compaction one perceives countless sources being generated that take into account the program and the meanings the project should convey. It has abstract and not literal references.

Therefore, there is a rethinking on form as a composite element of the architecture. These forms possess textures that seek to qualify them, be they of plaster or stone. They are combined in dynamic outlines that soften in the context of the whole. They are elaborated without becoming too obsessive. In fact, they seek to be points of attraction - albeit noiselessly - because the sites for which they are planned are not always generous to architecture. Many of them - given the segregating nature of their purposes or uses, or the disqualification of the surroundings - render a direct relationship unviable, transforming every new intervention into an attempt to build a new starting point, almost a landmark. One must, however, resist the impulse to try to resolve everything in a single gesture. One must be parsimonious, patient, avoiding multiplicity and dispersion. This effort is perceived in the group’s portfolio of housing projects, in the choice of potentially clear but compact geometries generated (in most cases) from two predominating axes; in the controlled resolution of the programs, and in the obedience to simple pleasures, such as an opening onto a patio or garden or, even, onto a landscape setting, some trees, a lake …

Reflection on architecture, its implications, its feasibility, the possible solutions, involves the choice of interlocutors. Daily office work can be quite solitary. It is within this context that participation in competitions assumes particular relevance.

For this group it is a way of keeping the debate alive, of confronting their realisations alongside those of others. It is also a guarantee, in construction, of greater loyalty to the project. Simultaneously it allows one to work on a public scale, leaving the domesticity of housing to take on problems raised by urban development. It is an activity that involves risks but on the other hand delivers satisfaction. It develops a greater permeability between the architect and society. This is the side that best defines the kind of participation this office is developing.

It is intervening in the city or in university structures that the exercise of architecture is par excellence. The consolidated sediments of this experience oblige us to ponder on the meaning of what one intends and what one will add. One must foresee uses, transformations, metamorphoses, because public equipment is, by definition, reversible, subject to policy changes, permanently undergoing alteration, and difficult to maintain.

Once again, the potential and theme of form is explored. Still, one invests in spaces, more incisive areas. Often, this presence shows itself in a void: they are exercises on the configuration a void can have.

In the library for Coimbra this can be understood as tension, because it defines a narrow and highly permeable corridor, separating two more opaque, less permeable, volumes. In the Health Sciences Branch, also for Coimbra, the patio is like a void, a cylinder that has detached itself from the compact mass of the building.

These are moments in which the passage of form materialises - for the effect it can suggest - for it to be understood as a spatial register, signalling a pause or a passage within the building or the complex. And it is through the concentration imposed by this transition that, we believe, the work of this group will progress.

[Ana Vaz Milheiro]
CLCS Arquitectos

Italian text translation by Marzia Petracca

©copyright archphoto 2003-CLCS Arquitectos-Ana Vaz Milheiro