The citizen who was with open arms architecture – Daily News – Lisbon

Nuno Teotonio Pereira died at age 93. Makes extensive work and the obstinacy of the struggle for civil rights

There is no man or the architect. There Nuno Teotonio Pereira, citizen, antifascist fighter, architect with extensive work, strong, made to think about who would use. This is the idea with whom he learned, with whom he worked, who when he had been arrested, of those who study his work. And even those who inhabit the houses he designed. “Nuno Teotonio Pereira is a kind of continuous reference architecture in Lisbon. It is the master of masters,” says Manuel Aires Mateus, architect, 53.

Nuno Teotonio Pereira died yesterday at home in St. neighborhood Miguel, in Lisbon at the end of the morning, surrounded by his family. Was 93, almost 94 (completing them on the 30th). The disease has brought her vision, this vital bridge with the world, with the cities, the people for whom it was citizen and worked. But did not stop him from living. “Even after being blinded he went far to [Theatre] St. Louis,” says Jorge Salavisa, a former dancer, artistic programmer. And inhabitant of the Free Waters Block – user as it was called in the 1970s – one of the iconic buildings of the architect. Salavisa remembers going with his mother, floor by floor, choose the house, “choose the view” when the building was built. And that was the fourth floor. “I see from the Ritz to Palmela, is absolutely fantastic.”

But the most fantastic that houses block, between the mouse and the Amoreiras, which Teotonio designed with Bartolomeu Costa Cabral between 1953 and 1955, built in 1956 is the “breath of fresh air, the huge modernity.” These are the words of Manuel. “Not only does it being a storage giants apartments, which are, had space for everyday commerce, office floors on the first floor, a collective laundry, a nursery where children could stay,” explains the architect. “It was kind of small housing unit but was not segregated city.”

City without ghettos

He could not. Integration was the key ideals of Nuno Teotonio Pereira. And it is in buildings – for example, in the arcades of buildings as Franjinhas, the building with “hair” on the corner of Braamcamp Street and Castilho – and their political and civic action. “The architecture that he exercises and practice in a way related to life. The architecture is a profession made against the background of integrative city without ghettos,” underlines Gonçalo Byrne, 75, a master’s student.

It would not be the only one. “It was my master in architecture, it was he who taught me to do a project,” said Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, with the drift of the 87 years that every day still go up to his studio in Lisbon Rua da Alegria. “We worked together in the building of the Águas Livres and beyond. I followed Nuno and he to me life,” he told DN.

shared authoring

Gonçalo Byrne follows the mobile phone on a train en route to Zurich, Switzerland: “I met Teotonio Pereira architect when I was taking the course he had a workshop with the architect Nuno Portas When had finished the course I was fortunate to go.. work with Teotonio Pereira and Nuno Portas, which was about six to seven years, 68-75, almost to the post-April 25th. ” Speaks sad, slowly, with gusto, “Nuno”. How gentle man of strong convictions heard everybody. “The vision he had in society, the city, the land on which citizenship is shared, it also had in the studio. When I saw that some employees had a good idea, he gave a certain freedom,” says Byrne. “I inherited it shared authorship. It is closed for the benefit of the project itself.” Idea underlined by Graça Dias, “is a reference from an ethical point of view, has always had great care with the explanation of co-authorships, never forgot to refer people and never set on tiptoe towards the architecture that had produced.”

Born in Lisbon on January 30, 1922 in a Catholic family and pro-Salazar, Nuno Teotonio Pereira graduated in Architecture in 1949 from the School of Fine Arts of Lisbon with final score of 18 points. Was the Valada water catchment system Ribatejo (1948-57) which crowned the final note of course. He was 26 years old. It had been the studio of Carlos Ramos, between 1940 and 1943.

He participated in the 1st National Congress of Architecture in 1948, asserting itself as one of the opponents to the aesthetics of the Salazar regime, particularly that idea of ​​a “Portuguese architecture” typical. “This is a modern architect who works from the Second World War in a backward Portugal, reactionary, with a political power that wants to impose a style,” says Manuel. “If I worked as early as concrete, make up buildings with elevators, no sense that they were crowned with Baroque roofs …”, emphasizes.

For this Teotonio Pereira drove height and participated in carrying out the survey the Portuguese Popular architecture, launched by the National Union of Architects, which made known the various housing styles in the various regions of the country.

His work was very marked by social housing. Advocated housing for all. Was Economic Housing advisor at the Federation of Welfare Funds, 1948-1972, has work done in Braga, Castelo Branco, Póvoa de Santa Iria, Barcelos, Vila Nova de Famalicão, Vila do Conde, Caramulo and Lisbon (Groves, Chelas and portcullis).

The workshop Joy

In a society dominated by the regime, the gym was repressive. “The school [architecture] Lisbon was retrograde. Nuno Teotonio Pereira was able to create a school of architecture in parallel Joy Street studio, we called him the atelier of Joy,” said Ana Pennies. Architect and university professor, remembers the “bridge” that Teotonio made with the school of Porto (“where many architects had to go finish the course”), how influenced new generations, as “grown up with them.”

He had political actions “very clear,” says Pennies. “It was a civic example,” says Graça Dias. “He joined the political movement called Catholic Progressives, was coordinator of the clandestine newspaper Right to Information, participated in vigils against the war Colonial Church of St. Dominic and the Mouse Chapel and Anticolonial Bulletin. It was one of the faces Relief Commission to Political Prisoners “, wrote yesterday Helena Pato, teacher, activist of the CFP, the movement of the Facebook Never Again Fascism. As Teotonio, was arrested at the hands of PIDE in Caxias.

sketches in Caxias

The architect was arrested three times. In 1967, 1972 and 1973. He was released on April 26, 1974 the “longest prison of all,” recalls Gonçalo Byrne. The studio master’s disciple had to carry on the “panther color pink,” which Teotonio already idealized. The project for social housing block to be born in Chelas in 1974 was “carried forward” by Byrne, António Cabrita Reis and Nuno Portas. “We do get to prison a small clipboard to draw but we could not meet with him. It was a very hard prison, he was tortured, was a long time in great solitary confinement,” Byrne account.

“Even in adverse conditions did not fail to think of the great problems of architecture,” notes Graça Dias. When the studio is working the Franjinhas (1965-1967), he made drawings for concrete flaps, the elements that have “personality” (and shadow) to the building, in prison. “There are several studies and drawings produced in Caxias, sent to employees.”

Life is marked by the struggle against fascism. It is a founding member of the MES (Socialist Left Movement in 1970) and it remains until its extinction. Not without “a very active civic participation, particularly in terms of Lisbon”, writes Helena Pato.

Four Valmor Awards

“The Teotonio Pereira architect knew the city of Lisbon as few and thought and designed the city of Lisbon as few “, said yesterday António Costa, now prime minister, former mayor of Lisbon. Was “an admirable architect who contributed to the debate on housing policies in Portugal and left a remarkable architectural work, particularly in Lisbon,” he said.

The city has four buildings of architect are Valmor Prize: in Groves Northern Housing Tower (with Nuno Portas and Antonio Pinto Freitas, 1967), the Franjinhas (with John Braula Reis, 1971), the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (with Nuno Portas, 1975) and more recently, the metro station Cais do Sodre (with Pedro Botelho, 1998).

He was an honorary member of the Order of Architects since 2004 and an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto (2003) and the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon (2005). In 2015 he was awarded the Prize University of Lisbon by exercise “brilliant” in the area of ​​architecture and how “ethical figure.” The disease not allowed to be present in the Aula Magna to receive the prize.

The church that can cross

The fight against fascism marks its life. But also the modernity of religious architecture. Founded in 1953, the Renewal Movement of Religious Art (with Nuno Portas). He is the author of one of the most extraordinary churches in the country, the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Rua Camilo Castelo Branco, Lisbon. It is here that will be on-burning chamber from 17.00 today. A building that has to be crossed, architecture with open arms that spread across the country. The funeral takes place on Friday at 13:30, to the Graveyard of Lumiar.

“His work is immortal, but it costs a lot to know that Nuno Teotonio Pereira no longer lives in Lisbon. Just when passed in Braamcamp until the Franjinhas seemed more bent by the weight of age, “said Jorge Sampaio, former president and longtime friend of the architect.