The third and last conversation in the PLURAL conversation cycle, inserted in the SCHOOLS: Complexity and Interpretation research project, takes place on January 29, 2019 (Wednesday), at 6 pm, Cooperage - Casa da Arquitectura (Matosinhos ).

Free admission (subject to room capacity).

Artur Mexia (director of SAPA Building Systems), Nuno Brandão Costa (Architect), Rui Furtado (Engineer), Vasco Freitas (Professor FEUP) and Raúl Bessa (Engineer) are invited.

The moderation is in charge of Susana Marvão, a journalist specialized in Information and Communication Technologies (Revista Business.IT).

The session also includes interventions by architect Nuno Sampaio, Executive Director of Casa da Arquitectura, and student Francisca Mendonça who will present the project SCHOOLS: Complexity and Interpretation and, in particular, the objectives of the Conversation Cycle and the meaning of debates Technologies.

Technologies is part of the PLURAL Conversation Cycle, aiming to debate architecture from a broad and interdisciplinary view, summoning several of knowledge. This second moment of reflection and diffusion, incorporated in the research project SCHOOLS: Complexity and Interpretation, based at CEAU, is based on a partnership between Casa da Arquitetura and the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. Under the coordination of André Santos, the project has as a backdrop the architectural transformation of school buildings, intervened under the Parque Escolar Program, EPE, consisting of a universe of 74 schools located “north” of the country.

"And [with new technologies] architecture will also be better. A modern house is more comfortable than an old house. I am not saying that it is more beautiful or more pleasant. What I think is that there is a objective discourse of architecture. (…) The support of architecture is construction. Architecture, I think, is construction with added value that has nothing to do with physical and material utility, but has to do with happiness, an emotion, a passion that people adhere to. But the support is always the construction. " 1

Conversa Technologies is the third and final debate in the PLURAL Conversation Cycle, calling for the technological dimension in the context of school architecture.

The Conversation will count with the participation of Artur Mexia (director of SAPA Building Systems), Nuno Brandão Costa (Architect), Rui Furtado (Engineer), Vasco Freitas (Professor FEUP) and Raúl Bessa. Moderation is in charge of Susana Marvão, a journalist specialized in Information and Communication Technologies (Revista Business.IT).

Architect Nuno Sampaio, Executive Director of Casa da Arquitetura will introduce the session and student Francisca Mendonça will present the project SCHOOLS: Complexity and Interpretation and, in particular, the objectives of the Conversation Cycle and the meaning of the Technologies debate.

Considering the active and relevant performance of school buildings in the instruction of students, it is intended to promote a dialogue on the determining role of technological innovation, with consequences both in the school space and in users. The significant infrastructural burden, which the most recent legal diplomas induced, came to demand from architecture a diversified set of solutions that, oscillating between the exposure and the concealment of those systems, faced the specificity of intervention in pre-existing buildings. In addition, the issues of universality and, in particular, the guarantee of accessibility to the entire school space have allowed architecture to reaffirm its social responsibility, contributing to expand the educational value of the school institution. Thus, the integration of new technologies is not exempt from the reinvention of a new teaching-learning model that, rethinking the spatial-functional organization, favors the development of new pedagogical practices and also infrastructure the traditional classroom.