Ponce de Leão Paulouro Architecture, Urban Research and Design
Espaços Enclausurados
A segregação sócio-urbana moderna tem sido interpretada como uma consequência do controlo institucional do século XVIII. Tal abordagem está a ser crescentemente reanalisada como proveniente de condições religiosas e universais precedentes. Esta compreensão ajuda a explicar como os desenvolvimentos contemporâneos de segregação urbana estão a surgir através da discriminação individual. Sugere-se que estes comportamentos representam um entendimento erróneo e até um risco para o processo democrático de urbanidades contemporâneas
The eradication of public space
Whilst European cities have become a test-bed for multicultural habitation, the 2005 riots in France have demonstrated that the consequent social organization of space has not resulted in a greater integration of communities. As socio-economic space expands, socio-urban space is becoming increasingly segregated and fortified. Gated communities and the urban periphery are examined as a process of symmetrical and complementary schismogenesis, revealing a risk of urban systems breaking down into progressively autonomous agglomerations. It is argued that the twentieth century’s obsession with communication provoked a retreat from a Foucauldian disciplinary society into an autopoietic schismogenic return to ancient forms of fortified habitation.
Solar Garden
Competition entry for “Solar Park South”, Solar Garden proposes a photo-bioreactor park built upon the disused viaducts and highway of Calabria.
The park follows a modular construction approach starting with an array of new public lighting fixtures dotted along the coastline and a central bioreactor hanging garden on Favazzina viaduct, a true eco-lighthouse for the region.
IdHotel
The hotel has always been the stage of multiple identities and multi-national relations, but it is also the most foreign and alien home for those who inhabit it. In this project the hotel is seen as a potential device to preserve, display, and redistribute multiple identities into the centre of the city. The proposal expands on the concept of perpetual movement and transit already present within its travelling guests, channelling the energy of travellers into a requirement of use and dwelling in both the hotel space, and the city. Through this channelled and subsequently redistributed movement, a confrontation of both the city and the multiple identities of the hotel guests is effected.
Sparks
Communication can be a tool of urban re-qualification. In this project, urban voids are used as generators and walled-off machine elements for an urban social re-qualification. By releasing a web of energy cables onto the streets, directions, happenings, and flows can be implied and connected, thereby converging and materializing into a physical space in which this social re-qualification can take place.
Stultifera Navis
The Ship of Fools was a 15th Century invention – it was the first active ritual to expel unwanted figures and protect moral values. It was, in many ways, the precursor of social hospitals, prisons, and eventually, 20th Century modernist urbanisation. Spaces of confinement have normally been studied from an external point of view – they were little more than spaces of exclusion. But they can also be spaces where “souls succumb to the temptations of the world”. This is the premise of an urban confinement structure built on the outskirts of Lisbon.
Divided Playground
Suburban development tends to follow the same strategies of the gold rush, military conquests, and civilian outpost settlements. The demarcation and appropriation of space with walled areas form a vital part in the physical and social development of the suburban city. Certain hidden and psychological walls however, form a much greater part in the racial and social segregation of suburbia. This playground proposes the elimination of social and racial divisions through the creation of dividing walls and borders.
Hedera
Operating with new techniques and methods of urban intervention, conflict and negotiation are used as spatial practices. A new machine inhabitant is built in Berlin: one which grows, dies, creates or steals spaces, interacts and interconnects on an urban and cultural scale. An animate form that grows and learns with the Turkish community of Kreuzberg.
Hedera Experiment
Operating with new techniques and methods of urban intervention, conflict and negotiation are used as spatial practices. This spatial intervention involved a series of self-lit wax and amber pods encasing local artefacts as a means to promote interaction between opposing sides of a spatial and political conflict in London.
Villa Seria
Morphotectonic architectural design. Just as the Opera Seria Casrtratti singers exhibited sounds of beauty, fruit of the pain and torture their bodies had to endure, so can the Earth display sounds and shapes of beauty through its own torture. The Villa Seria’s perilous location is imperative for the ‘house’ to fulfill its function as an early warning system for earthquakes, a model for seismic study, a bio-ecological performance studio, and a holiday home that, rather than confronting, responds and reacts to tectonic activity.
Arachne
Elimination of time through form and architecture is investigated through the use of moiré optical illusions in the construction of a casino and gambling device in southern England. Visual and sound moiré-based illusion systems are used as gambling and time-erasing devices, re-locating the act of gambling into a place where sight and time are no longer static.
Morse Market
Com o Mercado Morse pretende-se revitalizar um equipamento, usando custos controlados que permita, dinamizá-lo e multiplicar as suas funcionalidades, sem nunca esquecer as suas origens, permitindo um uso lúdico e cultural. É como principal objectivo, não apenas devolver o conceito de mercado, mas também criar um equipamento activo na melhoria da qualidade de vida dos habitantes de Ermesinde.
Stateless Sukkah
Competition entry for “Sukkah City”. In recognition of the sukkah as a reminiscence of the fragile dwellings of the ancient Israelites during the 40 years of displacement after the Exodus from Egypt, the Stateless Sukkah proposes a spatial symbol of all those populations who are still displaced around our globe. Its design is based on a rule-set of UNHCR data for displaced persons, generating a sukkah which is as much a tribute to the ancient Israelites wandering the desert, as it is a tribute to all displaced populations wandering our globe today.
M.Id.
Multiple Identities in urban systems are investigated in New Orleans through social attraction grid systems, spatial grids and urban constructions, and identity-driven cultural dislocations. What is proposed is the elimination of types, beliefs, colour and culture through extreme emotional and physical conditions in the construction of an underground labyrinth of social connections in the center of New Orleans.
T.A.Z. 5.4
Data-driven experiment on virtual Temporary Autonomous Zones. The animation is a continuous self-driven virtual environment reacting and growing according to a rule-set of immigration statistics; essentially, a social-migratory virtual dance.
T.A.Z. Experiment
An installation researching Temporary Autonomous Zones. This project proposes an architecture of relations: a vital integration of human interaction and transit with space. The possibility of extending the nature of festivals, political rallies, carnivals, dances and other public manifestations, through shifting random spaces. A site that strives not to be mapped.
Theatre Projections
Multimedia projections for two performance pieces are presented here. Three video pieces for “Sol. VIII”, performed at the Cochrane Theatre, and one video piece for “Columbia – The Capsule”, performed at the Battersea Arts Centre.
Sol. VIII
A set of three video projections on flesh and body produced for a perfomance shown at the Cochrane Theatre and based on Antonin Artaud’s “Spurt of Blood”.
All Quiet on the Western Front
A set of two video projections produced for the stage adaption of “All Quiet on the Western Front”, part of the 2006 Linbury Biennial for Stage Design.