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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
In the 1980s, in Ubatuba, on the shore of the state of São Paulo (Brazil), the architect Teresa Assoreira Almendra (1943, Angola) built what is believed to be her most accomplished work: the House of Oz. With a personal and professional path developed mainly in Angola and Portugal, the architect and interior decorator achieved, in this work, an intense dialogue between space, materiality and nature. Designed and built after Almendra left Angola, it allowed the architect to re-encounter a tropical context that was natural to her. Therefore, both as an architectural proposal and in a biographical sense, this work can be read as a personal synthesis of her African and European experiences, reinvented in Brazil. The goal of this proposal is to assess the particular condition of producing houses in their context. Methodologically, the work gathers relevant historical and architectural material-including drawings, texts, interviews-setting them in opposition and dialogue, in a critical perspective. Built in 1984, the House of Oz, which overlooks the beach, was commissioned by a Portuguese couple, who gave the architect complete freedom. Called Oz because of the importance given to its paths, these constitute an anchor between everyday life and the surrounding natural territory. For Teresa Almendra, the poetics of the place was underlined by the tracing of these crossings, where paths, passageways, galleries and bridges underpin domestic holiday life, forging a generous relationship with the enveloping forest and beach. In the House of Oz, architecture and decoration form a single entity, shaping family activities. Alongside the understanding and contextualization of the house, there is the perplexity of seeing a house with such architectural value be neglected within the historiography of Portuguese architecture: by mapping presences, we identify the glaring void of absences.
Description
Keywords
História da arquitectura - S. XX História da Arquitetura Mulheres Arquitetas Portugal Brasil Habitação unifamiliar
Citation
Pedrosa, Patrícia Santos. & Antunes, Lia Gil. (2022). “Teresa Assoreira's House of OZ and the expansion of the modern”. In Tostões, Ana et al. (eds.) 17th Docomomo International Conference. Modern Design: Social Commitment & Quality of Life. Proceedings. Valência: DOCOMOMO Internacional; University of Valencia.