Valores formales y criterios de intervención modernos en edificaciones patrimoniales: la arquitectura de Eduardo Souto de Moura

Abstract

Every day becomes more necessary and transcendent the intervention in existent buildings and therefore, there is more responsibility for the architects, especially in buildings that, because of their value, constitute the heritage of people. The main problem then, is focused in the quality of the intervention, which is the essential part for the success or failure of the reform process of a heritage asset. Many of them eliminate important formal historical values of the buildings and resort to outdated imitations as an integration argument. On the other hand, although the principles of modern architecture have shown be effective to make highly recognized architecture, it’s very common the appreciation that because of its developmental attitude, them contributed to the disappearance of the built heritage. The present investigation pretends to establish the criteria, principles and basis of actuation used by modern architecture in patrimonial intervention, showing also that it respects the restoring criteria established, being perfectly compatible with each other. The (re) construction of the project is the fundamental method and working instrument, which has been validated in the analysis of the later work of Souto de Moura and Mendes da Rocha, (both Pritzker Prizes with clear Modern training), and then applied in detail in the intervention of the Santa María do Bouro Convent. This process corroborates the hypothesis proposed; then, it verifies that the application of the fundamental precepts of modern architecture are the best option to dialogue with the old and obtain quality results. This research work was carried out with the interest of establishing what are the parameters and concepts used in the intervention, which allow preserving and strengthening the values of the heritage asset and that also assign quality and relevance.