Grand Tour #3

• Porto

Siting in the South of Europe, Portugal is a place marginal and isolated, but simultaneously a place of dreams and vertigo for new cultures, environments and perspectives to a deeper personal understanding of the world as a multilayered whole.

The affinities between Portuguese/Porto and some European architectures are widely documented yet scattered. The proliferation of post-war travels and shared concerns had a long-standing impact on Portuguese architecture and eventually informed the teaching approach purported by the Porto School. Since the 1960s, these exchanges were further supported by study and travel grants and enhanced by the 1974 revolution. From the 1980s on, many Portuguese architects have travelled and studied abroad, mainly due to the implementation of the Erasmus Programme.

For the last decades, Portuguese architecture has been in the spotlight, with two Pritzker laureates and a wide dissemination of its built contemporary landscape designed by a younger generation. The Porto Grand Tour intends to challenge individual understanding of Portuguese architecture (Porto School notion) by (re)visiting globally known and acclaimed key works to confront an open in-situ comprehension of fundamental design themes and details imperceptible through social media or published literature.

Four main critical itinerary typologies structure the Porto Grand Tour – Porto UNESCO centre, Porto urban polarities, Porto neighbourhood, Northern territory – with an Intensive Programme for Learners and an Open Seminar. Porto Grand Tour also includes Team Meetings and Staff Training.

The Porto Grand Tour aims to inspire the notion, in every "ending", a certain “beginning" is inscribed. Or an eternal new beginning/inception.