— NUNO LACERDA LOPES

Being contemporaneous in time and as a result of time

“Writing about Nuno Lacerda Lopes necessarily implies recalling a few aspects of his identity as a person and an author. As an architect and a designer, Nuno Lacerda is profoundly sensuous – an unusual characteristic in architects, Portobased or otherwise! A careful examination of his work, from set design to architecture or furniture, gives us an understanding of his material liking for things, shapes and textures, which are transfigured and flood our consistently explored feelings, either by touching the materials, observing the graphic, pictorial and spatial composition of the space or still through the intentional reflection of the light on the plans: all of it appeals to the most critical sensorial perception.”

Ricardo Pais

— THICK AS A BRICK

“More than a monograph, on the vast scenographic work of Nuno Lacerda Lopes, architect and professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, this book presents texts of reflection and criticism on the different processes of conception of architectural spaces and the recent evolution towards the scenographic and representation spaces that today’s architecture is developing.

Therefore, it also presents itself as a pedagogical and reflective instrument destined to all those who intend to follow or study the performing and theatrical arts as well as, the new architects who seek other paths and expressions for their architectures”.

Por isso, apresenta-se também como um instrumento pedagógico e de reflexão destinado a todos os que pretendem seguir ou estudar as artes performativas e teatrais bem como, os novos arquitetos que procuram outros caminhos e expressões para as suas arquiteturas.”

Excerpt

“The Idea”

“It was intended the creation of a scenic, multipurpose device, something playful and at the same time light, capable of transforming and adapting itself to the countless and almost always unthinkable needs of spatial-temporal resolution and aesthetics that contemporary theatre seeks: a multifunctional object without losing all the aesthetic and strategic discourse of the show, without putting at risk the discursive coherence of the production that Ricardo Pais always claims and that here in this work, more than demonstrating, seeks above all to enforce.

The existence of amplification for the voice of the actors in some way suggested the solution for scenography, something urban, something under construction, something in provocation or maintenance; a space of daily life, of encounter and disagreement, a fleeting space, without concrete references to something, only suggestion, something ostensible…as taste. A space/place where bodies can touch and progress freely between objects and in the relationships they establish with them! Something that makes them move and provokes them, capable of stimulating their sensuality, their path, their Being…

I use scenography as experimentation. The scenography ends up being a place where I draw and look for many spatialities, which I then use in the architectures, almost always misaligned, that I like to do. Maybe because of the Theatre and my debut at Teatro D. Maria II, with a text by the Austrian Thomas Bernhard that asks us what we are doing here “if it is mathematics or theatrical art?” and that tells us that if you are a true artist only if you are crazy from head to toe, if you give yourself totally to madness, transforming it into your radical method? and the World thinks what it wants and writes what it wants, the artist cannot be a chicken.  And further on he tells us that we must disturb, disturb… disturb always.

Sometimes I ask if these words have been a harbinger and if they have been a milestone in the definition of my career and of all my activity in both scenography and architecture.I don’t know the answer yet, so I say: maybe… But they were important words that clarify in part a lot of the work I produce, both in Scenography, Furniture Design, Design and Architecture, of that I have no doubt!  And that’s why the line is curved and often as cloudy as the song!

The “stigma of difference” that marks the whole production of Ricardo Pais, assumes in this show a particular evidence when the shell is undressed… suggesting an essential but not minimal space, an object that transgresses the theatrical place and invokes the show!”

Nuno Lacerda Lopes

— SCENES – DO DESENHO À REPRESENTAÇÃO

“More than a monograph, on the vast scenographic work of Nuno Lacerda Lopes, architect and professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, this book presents texts of reflection and criticism on the different processes of conception of architectural spaces and the recent evolution towards the scenographic and representation spaces that today’s architecture is developing.

Therefore, it also presents itself as a pedagogical and reflective instrument destined to all those who intend to follow or study the performing and theatrical arts as well as, the new architects who seek other paths and expressions for their architectures”.

Por isso, apresenta-se também como um instrumento pedagógico e de reflexão destinado a todos os que pretendem seguir ou estudar as artes performativas e teatrais bem como, os novos arquitetos que procuram outros caminhos e expressões para as suas arquiteturas.”

Excerpt

“The Idea”

“It was intended the creation of a scenic, multipurpose device, something playful and at the same time light, capable of transforming and adapting itself to the countless and almost always unthinkable needs of spatial-temporal resolution and aesthetics that contemporary theatre seeks: a multifunctional object without losing all the aesthetic and strategic discourse of the show, without putting at risk the discursive coherence of the production that Ricardo Pais always claims and that here in this work, more than demonstrating, seeks above all to enforce.

The existence of amplification for the voice of the actors in some way suggested the solution for scenography, something urban, something under construction, something in provocation or maintenance; a space of daily life, of encounter and disagreement, a fleeting space, without concrete references to something, only suggestion, something ostensible…as taste. A space/place where bodies can touch and progress freely between objects and in the relationships they establish with them! Something that makes them move and provokes them, capable of stimulating their sensuality, their path, their Being…

I use scenography as experimentation. The scenography ends up being a place where I draw and look for many spatialities, which I then use in the architectures, almost always misaligned, that I like to do. Maybe because of the Theatre and my debut at Teatro D. Maria II, with a text by the Austrian Thomas Bernhard that asks us what we are doing here “if it is mathematics or theatrical art?” and that tells us that if you are a true artist only if you are crazy from head to toe, if you give yourself totally to madness, transforming it into your radical method? and the World thinks what it wants and writes what it wants, the artist cannot be a chicken.  And further on he tells us that we must disturb, disturb… disturb always.

Sometimes I ask if these words have been a harbinger and if they have been a milestone in the definition of my career and of all my activity in both scenography and architecture.I don’t know the answer yet, so I say: maybe… But they were important words that clarify in part a lot of the work I produce, both in Scenography, Furniture Design, Design and Architecture, of that I have no doubt!  And that’s why the line is curved and often as cloudy as the song!

The “stigma of difference” that marks the whole production of Ricardo Pais, assumes in this show a particular evidence when the shell is undressed… suggesting an essential but not minimal space, an object that transgresses the theatrical place and invokes the show!”

Nuno Lacerda Lopes

— ARCHITECTURE – From representation to the project

Concepts such as verticality, compression, vertigo, transfiguration, light, movement, body and its spatiality,… are themes that the sense of the “sensual” can systematize and that, in some way, can characterize the path of investigation and creation of objects, spaces and events that I have been producing. The architecture is the one of greatest expression.

Excerpt

“School of Mouriz

The school is based on an idea of landscape and, as a setting, its design is complimentary and its spatiality develops inside a wooden box that draws the horizon, organising it.

In the end, it seems to recover memories of the factory buildings that populate the area and above all the memory that we keep of this municipality that is Paredes.

The building has a stripped down and rigorous appearance, and is marked by its winding roof, whose movement at the top creates an illusion of an apparent city skyline.

Of the building, in a markedly longitudinal shape responding to the place, two closed surfaces stand out, punctuated by the apparently disordered repetition of the same span. In this way, punctual spans dance along the side elevations creating a vibrant rhythm that contrasts with the open tops, with wide windows. The movement created by the roof extends into the interior, infecting the spaces with its language materialized in unevenness and differences in heights, always resulting in diverse and distinct spaces”

— NUNO LACERDA LOPES 1+1

The architect Nuno Lacerda Lopes was invited to participate in the Uzina Books 1 + 1 Collection with two works by CNLL, the school of Mouriz and the Casa Valongo.

The 1 + 1 Collection aims to disseminate to the general public, current references of Portuguese architecture and other related areas such as design or illustration. In these small format editions, where the layout intends to be direct in communication, we contemplate five distinct pieces in the presentation of each work: Text/intentions of the author; Concept; Construction; Work and Technical Drawings of the project.

The 1 + 1 Collection already has names like Guedes + De Campos, Aires Mateus, Bak Gordon, Graça Dias + Egas Vieira, Jorge Mealha, Nuno Sampaio and Ricardo Vieira de Melo.

Excerpt

“(…) A rigorous metrics served as the basis for the design of the interior, resulting in regular and orthogonal spaces where the uneven windows stand out, creating games of light, making the spaces more dynamic. The classroom thus gains a new dimension, ceasing to be an austere and inflexible space, being here a space of creativity and imagination, which is intended to be versatile and above all polyvalent. The movement created by the roof extends into the interior, infecting the spaces with its language materialized in unevenness and great differences in height, always resulting in diverse and distinct spaces. (…)”

Nuno Lacerda Lopes

— ARCHINEWS 29

A quarterly magazine, with an essentially monographic character, it divulges the life and work of national architects, constituting an editorial reference for professionals and students in the fields of architecture, urbanism, interiors and design.

Editorial

“Design and ways of living”

“Nuno Lacerda Lopes has been researching since 1986 on the “Design and Ways of Living”, an area in which the School of Oporto has asserted itself through the conception of architectural space, in its design, construction and in the different ways of living that contemporaneity shows.

The interaction and polyvalence appear as fundamental principles in the creation and projectual innovation, considering that art and science are not watertight, and that the contribution of other areas of knowledge and respective methodologies may constitute creative and qualification material, which establish in this model or ideal of organization a method for productive efficiency.

This Contemporary Architecture, with Holistic Vision, is based on man as the central figure of the built space, in an eternal appeal to the senses and a persistent and irreverent will to experiment and search for different materials, forms and concepts”.

Professor Doutor Arquiteto Carlos Alho,

Diretor Archinews

— A SENSE OF SENSUALITY

“Carlos Nuno Lacerda Lopes stands out in the lively and modern scene of Portuguese architecture for the maturity of his projects and his special awareness of shapes and materials. His works show a constant attention to the designed stylistic resources in order to provide the most direct way to incorporate structural and functional characteristics, and as such, perfectly defined as part of an open approach to modern values that effectively date back to ancient times”.

— NUNO LACERDA LOPES Collection

“CNLL furniture is imbued with the most absurd theatricality, it is completely silly and yet useful, it is absolutely beautiful and therefore indispensable! They are entirely Cárlicos Nunásticos Lacérdicos e Lópzicos!”

Ricardo Pais, Stage Director

Excerpt

“The Thought and the Design”

Nuno Lacerda Lopes

“It is always difficult to talk about us when we look at a journey that we have been doing quickly and sentimentally. I say we went with the collective sense of who promotes the meeting and the debate of ideas that are always behind who builds or draws.

It seems to me fundamental this double issue when analysing the work I have been developing in the area of drawing, which is the discipline that tells me the most and with which I have the greatest and deepest connection.

As a basis of work for the creation and development of a drawing piece, whatever it may be, I always start with a sense of use and experience, of touch and use, and in this sense I perceive the references that are made to my work as carnal expressions of a way of life that I intend to fill, full of diverse experiences and participation. (…)”

Nuno Lacerda Lopes

— FURNITURE – From thought to drawing

In addition to the collection of the best furniture projects designed by architect Nuno Lacerda Lopes and his team over the last 20 years, this book brings together theorical memories of the creator’s intimate relationship with his works, as well as reports from “intruder” clients.

Excerpt

“The design of a piece encloses two opposing realities: one ideal and the other material. The design allows these opposites to be transformed into a unity, giving body to the natural relationship between man and objects, or between the man who inhabits it and Architecture. That is why I think of the objects, the furniture, as something that is familiar to us and that we should not annihilate creatively, but rather give continuity, adding other looks, needs and demands. They must be “equal” but also different. They must be “normal” but above all special; they must be “new” but impregnated with history and tradition. Finally, they must be necessary for man to exist”. (…) “

— NUNO LACERDA LOPES | ARQUITECTURAS

Excerpt

“CNLL – An acronym with architecture inside.

Prof. Arch. Manuel Correia Fernandes

“It is an almost unusual construction. Like a boat in the middle of an urban park. A huge side behind which one imagines an equally grandiose cavername and inside a world of things. On the front, on the arrival side, of course. the water. It’s true that that way can be read: a boat coming from no one knows where, lying there so that everyone can enter it. And we enter. Curiosity overcomes the desire to look at this “UFO” strangely made of wood as boats usually are and not spaceships!

An immense space welcomes a thousand and one suggestions grabbed and sub-structured among which we can walk. The first walk is a delight. Just like who walks through a scenery. That’s it! The suggestion, now, is that of a big stage box. An “emptiness” where a light flows that fills in a very calm way this “nothing” full of mystery that only the use can unveil. People, distended, absort or attentive figures, occupy the places that someone has destined for them. Others enter and leave. Of course. Like someone who breathes. The “object” has soul inside and mystery outside. It is a multiple suggestion for those who look at it and use it. It serves the purpose for which the Centro Multimeios de Espinho (1997-1999) was thought and made.