Recensão: Michelangelo Sabatino, "Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy"

Recensão de: Michelangelo Sabatino, "Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy", Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011

Sustentabilidade nas construções em ambiente tropical

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Civil – Perfil de Construção

Evaluation of air lime and clayish earth mortars for earthen wall renders

CIAV2013 – International Conference on Vernacular Architecture, 7º ATP, VerSus, 16-20 october 2013

Alcácer-Quibir. Uma obra têxtil de Paula Rego na década de 1960

Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em História de Arte Contemporânea

Air lime-earth blended mortars - Assessment on fresh state and workability

International Conference on Vernacular Heritage, Sustainability and Earthen Architecture, VerSus 2014, 2nd MEDITERRA, 2nd ResTAPIA, 11-13 September, Valencia, Spain

Identidades em Fluxo: a auto-representação fotográfica e o caso prático do Instagram

A fotografia tem sido utilizada desde a sua génese como uma ferramenta performativa para a autorepresentação identitária, servindo para criar reflexivamente uma imagem idealizada do self, através de mecanismos retóricos que lhe são próprios. Seja através da representação directa ou não, a fotografia quando em contextos comunicacionais e narrativos oferece sempre uma construção identitária do criador destas imagens, ao tornar visível as suas escolhas de estilo de vida. A memória desempenha também um importante papel nas práticas fotográficas, permitindo que estas imagens inertes participem na criação de narrativas pessoais e salvando das incertezas da mente humana os momentos fugazes da nossa existência. Visto como mais objectiva, a fotografia funciona prova de algo ou da existência de alguém, parecendo residir nesta capacidade apodítica o seu maior valor, a despeito do seu inevitável enviesamento ideológico. A fotografia é também forçosamente um artefacto social, obedecendo a regras e convenções que lhe são implícitas e que moldam-na, assim como à leitura que os outros farão dela. Com a introdução da fotografia digital estas práticas massificaram-se e tornaram-se mais baratas, portáteis e integradas no dia-a-dia, notando-se uma aceleração quer na criação quer na visualização de imagens e uma maior abertura para a experimentação, aceitando o mundano e o banal como possíveis objectos de interesse e dando-lhes um destaque até então impensável. As novas redes sociais, em especial o Instagram, vieram alargar consideravelmente o número de fotógrafos e expandir as possibilidades da fotografia vernacular, tornando necessário reavaliar estas questões à luz das novas práticas fotográficas que este instaurou.

New Opportunities for Development Journalism: Enlarging the Public Sphere with ICTs

The present study examines new opportunities offered by the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enhance the development journalism practice, in order to enlarge the public sphere and empower ordinary people to participate more actively in public debate on issues affecting their development. The analysis of the achievements and challenges faced by 32 radio stations under the UNESCO project “Empowering Local Radios with ICTs” offers an overview of the introduction of ICTs in different contexts, within and among seven countries in Sub- Saharan Africa. Even though the lack of ICTs access and knowledge is still a concern in the developing world, especially in rural areas, these new tools can be adapted to each context and foster a more pluralistic and participative media in order to address people’s needs and promote social change.

On and off air: an ethnographic exploration of minority radio in Portugal

Taking a Media Anthropology’s approach to dynamics of mediated selfrepresentation in migratory contexts, this thesis starts by mapping radio initiatives produced by, for and/or with migrants in Portugal. To further explore dynamics of support of initial settlement in the country, community-making, cultural reproduction, and transnational connectivity - found both in the mapping stage and the minority media literature (e.g. Kosnick, 2007; Rigoni & Saitta, 2012; Silverstone & Georgiou, 2005) - a case study was selected: the station awarded with the first bilingual license in Portugal. The station in question caters largely to the British population presenting themselves as “expats” and residing in the Algarve. The ethnographic strategy to research it consisted of “following the radio” (Marcus, 1995) beyond the station and into the events and establishments it announces on air, so as to relate production and consumption realms. The leading research question asks how does locally produced radio play into “expats” processes of management of cultural identity – and what are the specificities of its role? Drawing on conceptualizations of lifestyle migration (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009), production of locality (Appadurai 1996) and the public sphere (Butsch, 2007; Calhoun & et al, 1992; Dahlgren, 2006), this thesis contributes to valuing radio as a productive gateway to research migrants’ construction of belonging, to inscribe a counterpoint in the field of minority media, and to debate conceptualizations of migratory categories and flows. Specifically, this thesis argues that the station fulfills similar roles to other minority radio initiatives but in ways that are specific to the population being catered to. Namely, unlike other minority stations, radio facilitates the process of transitioning between categories along on a continuum linking tourists and migrants. It also reflects and participates in strategies of reterritorialization that rest on functional and partial modes of incorporation. While contributing to sustain a translocality (Appadurai, 1996) it indexes and fosters a stance of connection that is symbolically and materially connected to the UK and other “neighborhoods” but is, simultaneously, oriented to engaging with the Algarve as “home”. Yet, besides reifying a British cultural identity, radio’s oral, repetitive and ephemeral discourse particularly trivializes the reproduction of an ambivalent stance of connection with place that is shared by other “expats”. This dynamic is related to migratory projects driven by social imaginaries fostered by international media that stimulate the search for idealized ways of living, which the radio associates with the Algarve. While recurrently localizing and validating the narrative projecting an idealized “good life”, radio amplifies dynamics among migrants that seem to reaffirm the migratory move as a good choice.

Improving building technologies with a sustainable strategy

In recent years it has been noticed the progressive disappearance of vernacular sustainable building technologies all over the world mainly due to a strong urban rehabilitation process with modern technologies not compatible with ancient knowledge. Simultaneously new dwellings are needed all over the world and in this sense it was decided to study an ecological and cost-controlled building technology of monolithic walls that can combine the use of low carbon footprint materials, such as earth, fibres and lime using an invasive species: giant reed cane (Arundo Donax). This paper explains the development of this building technology through testing diverse prototypes.

Southern Modernisms. Critical Stances through Regional Appropriations. Conference proceedings

The hegemonic definition of Modernism has been subjected to an intense critical revision process that began several decades ago. This process has contributed to the significant broadening of the modernist canon by challenging its primal essentialist assumptions and formalist interpretations in the fields of both the visual arts and architecture. This conference aims to further expand this revision, as it seeks to discuss the notion of “Southern Modernisms” by considering the hypothesis that regional appropriations, both in Southern Europe and the Southern hemisphere, entailed important critical stances that have remained unseen or poorly explored by art and architectural historians. In association with the Southern Modernisms research project (FCT – EXPL/CPC-HAT/0191/2013), we want to consider the entrenchment of southern modernisms in popular culture (folk art and vernacular architecture) as anticipating some of the premises of what would later become known as critical regionalism. It is therefore our purpose to explore a research path that runs parallel to key claims on modernism’s intertwinement with bourgeois society and mass culture, by questioning the idea that an aesthetically significant regionalism – one that resists to the colonization of international styles and is supported by critical awareness – occurred only in the field of architecture, and can only be represented as a postmodernist turn. (...)

Southern modernisms from A to Z and back again

The book now being published results from a research project entitled Southern Modernisms that ran from March 2014 to May 2015 with FCT funding. The aim of the project was to explore the possibility of constructing a more inclusive, plural notion of modernism through the revision of Modernism’s prevailing definition – its stylistic focus, its formalist and anti-representative bias, as well as its autonomic assumptions, or, as far as architecture is concerned, its functionalist credo. This critical undertaking was grounded on the hypothesis that southern European modernisms featured a strong entrenchment in popular culture (folk art and vernacular architecture), and that this characteristic could be understood as anticipating some of the premises of, what would later become known as, critical regionalismo. (...)

Methodology for WSN communication technologies automated field tests

Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN) are networks of devices used to sense and act that applies wireless radios to communicate. To achieve a successful implementation of a wireless device it is necessary to take in consideration the existence of a wide variety of radios available, a large number of communication parameters (payload, duty cycle, etc.) and environmental conditions that may affect the device’s behaviour. However, to evaluate a specific radio towards a unique application it might be necessary to conduct trial experiments, with such a vast amount of devices, communication parameters and environmental conditions to take into consideration the number of trial cases generated can be surprisingly high. Thus, making trial experiments to achieve manual validation of wireless communication technologies becomes unsuitable due to the existence of a high number of trial cases on the field. To overcome this technological issue an automated test methodology was introduced, presenting the possibility to acquire data regarding the device’s behaviour when testing several technologies and parameters that care for a specific analysis. Therefore, this method advances the validation and analysis process of the wireless radios and allows the validation to be done without the need of specific and in depth knowledge about wireless devices.

Inventário e valorização do património arqueológico do concelho da Chamusca : da época Romana à época Moderna

O presente relatório resulta do estágio efetuado na Câmara Municipal da Chamusca. O mesmo teve como objetivo a realização de um inventário do património arqueológico do concelho da Chamusca, centrado nos períodos da época Romana à Moderna, elaborando conjuntamente uma observação sobre o respetivo povoamento do território. O inventário realizado compilou toda a informação identificada nas fontes bibliográficas nos documentos da época já publicados e nas informações orais que se foram recolhendo. Posteriormente, procedeu-se à confirmação dos dados no terreno, através de uma prospeção dirigida aos sítios nos quais havia indícios de ocorrências patrimoniais. O desenvolvimento deste projeto e deste tipo de investigação possibilitou a identificação/relocalização de um número muito significativo de sítios e potenciais sítios arqueológicos, num total de 136 sítios. O seu inventário foi sistematizado e permitiu, assim, a compilação do conhecimento do património arqueológico deste município, contribuindo diretamente para a sua salvaguarda, preservação e valorização junto da comunidade. A autarquia passou agora a ter um instrumento essencial para a definição das políticas de salvaguarda do património, bem como para a definição das estratégias de desenvolvimento do seu território.