Vila Algarve. Um Monumento na Memória da Cidade

• Autor(a) principal: Beatriz da Silva Ferreira
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10216/156694
• topic: Artes; Arts

Maputo is the current capital of Mozambique, one of the largest of the ive former Portuguese colonies in Africa. Prior to its independence in 1975, Maputo was called Lourenço Marques, a tribute to the Portuguese explorer. At the time, it quickly developed into an example of a cosmopolitan city. In a city so rich in Portuguese architectural heritage, there is one building that stands out in a rather dark and obscure way: Vila Algarve, a villa commissioned by businessman José dos Santos Ruino, and later owned by the PIDE- DGS, thus becoming its oicial headquarters in Lourenço Marques. The desire to reintegrate this building, with such a dark identity, into the city and its daily lows led to the dissertation topic presented: "Vila Algarve. A Monument in the Memory of the City". This dissertation aims to help change the negative view of this architectural object. Following an in-depth historical and architectural study, a design proposal is presented with the ultimate aim of highlighting three key points: rehabilitating and transforming the building so that Vila Algarve becomes a Monument open to the community, maintaining its historical reference as an element of living memory for current and future generations and creating a new space in which every experience lived there becomes new memories that become positive, happy references with an impact on the future dynamics of the project. With this design solution, a monumental space is created that encompasses the various themes of this type of architectural solution, as well as a memorial that portrays the history of the building and the creation of a new cultural space, while also resolving its structural problems, which are damaged due to their degraded state. This dissertation presents itself as an exercise in observation, understanding and transformation of an architectural object that, despite its notorious dark presence in the city, tells a story, belongs to a community and could be a generational landmark for its future.