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geral@nadanovo.org
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A series of collective visual essays, with no predefined order, dedicated to the re-use of salvaged building components. This practice is as old as construction itself, but is frequently set aside in favour of the continuous application of new products, fuelled by a production system built on speed and obsolescence.
In each essay we start from the observation of inbetween moments (intermédios) in the lives of components — uses between production and final disposal — in search of the qualities that determine each re-use. We highlight the materiality of re-use: the richness of detail, the aesthetics, the textures, the forms, the changes of function, the marks of use or wear. These qualities reveal previous lives, invisible histories, hidden meanings, and the values and emotions from which distinct cultures of re-use emerge. Formal and informal, these cultures emerge from processes deeply connected to people, to their actions, and to social, economic and political contexts.
We point to specificities of construction methods that are often neither pre-conceived nor guided by standardised procedures. With no dogmatic restrictions, we accept the blurring of thematic boundaries and the deconstruction of preconceptions unconsciously present at the outset of each piece of research.
In a relationship of interdependence, the visual discourse and the written notes provide critical readings of various universes of re-use. By recreating interconnections with what we build and rebuild — in architecture, in scenography, in sculpture and in other areas of the everyday material world — each publication challenges the reader's own lexicon.
We also transfer the theme of re-use into the physical form of each INTERMÉDIO, through graphic design, printing on paper discarded by the printworks and reversible binding, establishing coherence between content and materialisation. The printed format, which entails the synthesis and sequential organisation of ideas, constitutes a simplified version of the richness of themes and the complexity of connections that emerge during the process of research and editing. The order in which we organise the contents in each essay reflects an intention, shaped by the perspective of the moment in which it is produced.
Without introduction or conclusion, each essay is an inbetween moment in our ongoing research into re-use. Other perspectives and themes remain to be explored.
I am neither myself nor the other,
I am something in between:
The pillar of the bridge of boredom
That goes from me to the Other.
Mário de Sá-Carneiro
Poema 7 em Indícios do Ouro, 1914
~
(...) I see them rather as belonging to an intermediate tier, differently free, for which it would make no sense to speak either of the logic of the character or the contingent necessity of the person, If you cannot tell me who they are, at least tell me what they do (...)
José Saramago
História do Cerco de Lisboa, 1989
Titles:
2024-2025
PRACTICES
Re-use practices, inherently linked to construction itself, have persisted with resilience through various expressions: cultural, aesthetic, economic, technological, social or political.
This essay places side by side examples of re-use based on historical and heritage value, vernacular culture or informal use of opportunity, conceived in formal architectural design methods or self-built. These cases all originate exclusively from Portugal, seeking to highlight the diversity of local approaches.
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DOORS
Doors, originally designed to establish borders or passageways, are one of the architectural elements in the world of construction with the greatest rate and variety of re-use.
This essay, intentionally confined to Portuguese territory, goes through some examples of these cultures of door re-use, to make visible the stories of previous lives and new applications.
> more information
Fotos: NADA