Construir sobre o Abismo: Projeto para uma capela na Ilha do Pessegueiro

Abstract

A fundamental restlessness underlies this endeavor. How can one construct a phrase, how can one decree any kind of assertion at all, in face of the infinite volubility of this era of ours? There are no more monuments of certainty or grand stories, but only the decrepit ruins of old ambitions, spectres and scattered corpses; scarecrows and empty shells... Sacredness collapsed, and with it so slowly went all of our convictions. But Art is made of convictions. It remains but the charge of gathering the necessary forces to ground them; of finding (or building) the ground upon which we can establish ourselves. An aesthetic attitude. The present dissertation aims to do just that, through a return to the roots of human gesture and the duality that germinates there. Based upon a decidedly nietzschean epistemology, we will make use of one of the oldest dualities: the Apollonian and the Dionysian; and with it construct a vision of architecture as the strongest evidence of a singularly beautiful and absurd existential condition. Along the way, we'll witness the course of architectural labour through modernity and its efforts to set up new canons. We'll also see the evolution of the sacred during this period and how one could, perhaps, interpret it today. At the end of this analysis or exploration, a transmutation from theory to practice will take place (a practice that, in fact, preceded theory); and there will be an attempt to embody these ideas in a religious project.