ISBN
978-989-98073-5-8

Edition
CIAMH

Year
2019

Number of pages
120

Dimensions
14,5x22cm

— New book from the collection “Conversas com Arquitectos”

No. 11 “Conversas com Arquitectos – Rui Braz”

“INTRODUCTION

Rui Braz Afonso, challenging meanings…

It’s Manuel Castells who reminds us that: ” The space isn’t a reflection of society, it’s society. Therefore the space forms, at least on our planet, are produced, like all other objects, by human action. They express and realise the interests of the dominant class according to a given mode of production and a specific mode of development. They express and implement the power relations of the state in a historically defined society… Finally, from time to time, social movements arise to challenge the meaning of the spatial structure and thus try new functions, new forms”…

The intricate web of knowledge that Rui Braz confronts us with, whenever we debate something with him, no matter how circumstantial, is a characteristic that has remained – now perhaps more refined, for its existence and for the enlargement to other disciplinary areas that it has been carrying out.

The intersection of other visions, of other paths, of other approaches, is always present in his way of seeing and being in the world. The constant search to widen frontiers and to bring in other subjects, showing that there are other possibilities to see and to solve everything that is approached and that nothing has only one fixed or stable point of view, seems to be one of the fundamental characteristics of Professor Rui Braz’s thinking and way of being.

To speak of a subject will always be, in his vision of the world, to speak of multiplicity, of divergence, of incoherence, of countless authors, of other characters, of cinema, of arts, of urbanism, of planning and of teachers, illustrious or anonymous men, but above all of life and of innovation, of desire too… Basically, there is in his discourse the permanent challenge of the will to mix and to create another and new vision – which is not a simple result of the assumptions with which the debate began…”.