Full Event
29 Sep
International Seminar: Researching Architecture
Speaking of Architecture
The seminar seeks to answer a question: what is the meaning of advanced research in architecture?
Though comprehensive, it should hold specific features that endow a doctoral program with singular
dynamics. Higher studies in architecture must be rooted in history and theory, but – under the light
of a new legal framework – can also include “a work, set of works, and innovative accomplishments
supported by written argumentations that make clear a process of conception, elaboration, and
research.” (Decree no. 230/2009, September 14, 2009).
Thus – in addition to technological, historical, and theoretical research – the development of a
practice-based project is a valid form of concluding advanced studies. In the context of the School of
Arts of the University of Évora, research contemplates two primary courses:
1) Project and practice as investigation
2) Theory, criticism, and curatorship of architecture
Architecture is considered as a discipline that, besides technical expertise associated to construction,
congregates different forms of knowledge into a material and conceptual structure able to conform
reality. Given this inclusive nature, a specific domain of intervention and research must be debated.
The School of the Arts intends to create a program of studies with a clear profile, taking advantage
of the historical context of Évora as Unesco World Heritage. Guidelines must be set to achieve this.
Although the courses to adopt are clear, the ways to do it are still open. That is, doubts persist on what
contents, skills, and methods must the conveyed in suchlike doctoral programs. With the Bologna
Process, the scope of research is no longer exclusive to the academy. Rather, it is open to all those
that wish to expand their professional proficiencies. The new models of investigation should reflect
this reality, under which a doctorate is the start of a progression instead of the finish. The purpose
of the seminar is to discuss grounds to substantiate this in the case of architecture. Resorting to the
experience and accounts of several experts, it will gather reference for a new program of advanced
research in architecture.
Link to the event website: http://www.investigararquitectura.uevora.pt/
