Sandra Sofia P. ANTUNES, Maria Helena SOUTO

UNIDCOM, IADE — Creative University, Lisbon, Portugal

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Abstract
Focussing on the statements of a group of architects from Lisbon’s School of Fine Arts, founders of the Multiplano atelier, this lecture offers an insight into the development of a project-oriented-culture within those circles. Their quest, which involved abandoning all dogmatic form, standing against geniality and individual inspiration, contributed to the implementation of processes, imagistic ideologies and activity relating to what by the late 50s, quite silently given its inherent socialist connotations, was being inaugurated in Portugal under the aegis of the term Design. This study uses historiographical and applied research methodology, based on the discovery of Multiplano’s archives and a subsequent inventory of their work and collaborators. The discovery of a particular document by Carlos Roxo brought to the discussion specific concepts like Useful, Scientific Aesthetic, Architecture as Visual Art and the Organic Materialist Method. Stimulating interaction between art, science, emotion, technology and the common Man; claiming the architect to be an artist, whose metier is a form of arts-based research (which by means of Scientific Aesthetics instigates debate on architecture’s syntax, semantics, method and utility), our protagonists provide an ideological and professional testimony on the growing awareness of a science of design in Portugal.

Keywords
Portuguese Design History; Synthesis of the Arts; Project Methodology; Material Culture;
Design Studies