A construção moderna e a cultura arquitectónica no início do Novecentos em Portugal

1º Vol.: 242 f. ; 2º Vol.: Anexos . - 186 f., [115] f. il.O 2º volume apenas existe em formato papel. Poderá ser consultado na Biblioteca da FBAUL - Cota: TES 11 (1)It is the aim of the present work to study the published articles in the A Construção Moderna, the first Portuguese magazine, edited from the year 1900 to 1919, dedicated both to architecture and to building in general. In such an important period of time for the Portuguese history and culture, as the turning of the century was, this pioneer experience introduced the ideias, the concepts and the materials that sustained the architectural thought and production in the beginning of the modernism in Portugal. In the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, Portugal was an undeveloped country. With its fragile economy and an almost non-existent industry, no wonder that the urban development and the consequent architectural languages appeared rather late in this country. In a cultural atmosphere still very much influenced by the 19th romanticism, the characters of such trend, were mainly the educated people seduced by the positivist doctrine and by the realistic aesthetics. So the modernism question is introduced in Portugal through two different ways of both artistic and cultural influences: on the one hand the French context, through the Academy (where the national architects took their training), the racionalism, the beaux-arts references and the cosmopolitan «Haussmann city»; on the other hand, the 19th English scenery, through the Arts and Crafts, the gothic revival and the cultural tradicionalism. These educated men of the last decade of the 19th century got their inspiration in these two sources. They were engaged in the rebirth of the values of the national identity and in defending the traditional culture, the picturesque and the folklore, trying to define a national example of architecture. The magazine A Construção Moderna appeared under these circumstances through the will and effort of these three men: Nunes Colares, typographer and the project guide; Melo de Matos, engineer and skilful mathematician; and Rosendo Carvalheira, architect with a certain romantic spirit and extremely dedicated to the national cause.Throughout their careers, they fixed the great topics of the architectural culture of this period: the social and cultural importance of the architects; the art critics; the ‘Portuguese house’ model; the restore politics; the urban development; the ‘cheap houses’; the Portuguese ‘style’; and the introduction of the new technologies and new building materials in the civil construction, among many other problematic