ABOUT THE JOURNEY

PROAP was founded formally in 1989 as a consequence of the collaboration of a group of five young landscape architects, led by João Nunes, that kept regular activity since 1984/85.
Its work, developed at the first location of the studio in Rua de Sto. António à Estrela, next to the garden and to the basilica, was already characterized by a broad intervention spectrum that explored directions that were at that time hardly treated, and that was consolidating a philosophy of approach of the elements of the landscape that differentiate it from others and that establish a remarkable and recognizable identity in the projects that were going to be worked out.

Out of this intensive pioneering work resulted noticeably the project interventions in outdoor public and institutional spaces, sometimes given concrete form to it in construction yards, sometimes left behind by the promoters, but all of them characterized by the search to integrate in one system, on one side the functionality and metabolism of the natural processes with an intentional formalisation, and on the other side the architectonical aspects – as an implicit revolt – sometimes expressed – against the "naturalism without any form" that was at that time, in a silent way, very powerful.

The search for new materials and for new solutions and interpretations of constructivism - some of them encountered persistent development in the following years - constituted a facet of big relevance in the subsequent consolidation of a notoriously autonomic way of working. The same occurred when graphic expressions, successively introduced in the presentation designs of ideas and concepts and translating the realization of what will be, became an instrument of communication, more than only the presentation of technical solutions, and they pretend to transmit into an element of artistic value as such.
On the other hand, the development of evaluation methodologies for the visual quality of the landscape and for the evaluation of visual impact gained evidence, introducing in an unmistakably pioneering way - in Portugal – the technical simulation and scientifically support of visual impact assessments, using software that edits images and constructions, in a CAD environment, to the three-dimensional image of the objects dealing with the impact.

These methodologies of approaching the impact on the landscape and on the activities that are associated to it, conduct to two consequences of a distinct nature: in one way, a certain way of "specification" of the foreseeable visual impact becomes common and accessible, interpretable by everybody, increasing the importance of the one describing the landscape in the process of impact evaluation and in the decision making process; on the other hand, the solid establishment of computerization of the studio in all the aspects of the work guarantees the maintenance of a heading position in this aspect too that, even though smaller, is essential to the transformation of all the subsequent procedures. The winning proposals for the contests of the Hotel do Palácio do Correio-Mor (with Teresa Castrate/José Soalheiro/Paula Calheiros), of the Cemitério dos Olivais, of the Largo de Sapadores (with Alberto Oliveira), and the respective subsequent developments constitute important moments in this first phase of the work of PROAP; as do the analyses of visual impact carried out for the Subida das Águas in Amarante - Barragem do Torrão and Central Hidroeléctrica do Pêgo.

The increasing amount of work justifying a permanent progressive increase of the team – quasi exclusively recruiting from internships from the Instituto Superior de Agronomia – brings to the need to look for new installations for the studio, which becomes reality in 1992 in Rua de Louis Derouet, at Campo de Ourique. For the first time, the working space is organised in function of a stabilised team and in accordance to a program that imposes a certain traditional separation: work – meeting | ICT | scale modelling | secretary | archives and catalogues. The intensification of the produced work and the full computerization of the totality of stages subsequent to the conceptual and creative development, incorporates, in a very wrinkled way, the constitution of a multidisciplinary area for debate, work, reflection and the assumption of a formation of the people that join the team, predominantly coming from the Landscape Architecture courses, but also coming from Architecture, Design, Plastic Arts.

This multidisciplinarity was discovered and created in true joint work that’s always been looking for an attempt to clarify and deepen the substance and of implications of landscape architecture on the social interaction, the professional work, the scientific aspect and the artistic elements; it was invariably beyond the immediate resolution of a problem that was put or that, probably, justified to meeting of people and their attempts to reflect (so often academically) and it extended, also invariably, to other themes and broader directions, frequently parallel or contrary to the specific worries that dominated those days. In those memories, the generosity and endeavour are remembered of agricultural specialist, foresters, botanists, fitosociologues and of geo-technicians, infrastructural engineers, experts of prefab concrete structures, of electro technical engineers and of water engineers, of hydraulic specialists, hydrologists and environmental engineers, biologists of maritime and terrestrial fauna and of painters, sculptors, but also of cabinetmakers, locksmiths, bricklayers...

The studio's intentional quest for consciousness indeed functions as a space of formation that probably started in those days and gives a sequel to the observation, already previously felt, that the schools of Landscape Architecture aggravated the insistency of the preparation provided. This process, although not formalized, occurs daily until today, in a natural way that is generated through the intense relation between all the levels of collaboration; it comes within the concrete resolution of questions that arise and that suggest a debate in an environment in which hierarchy is only implicit. This way of living together makes the identification with the philosophy of the studio’s group work grow, it makes that the human qualities of the people be recognized and praised. As a consequence of this all, the technical performances advance.

In this period the possibility occurred to carry out work that was much more important than a simple project intervention, deepening and narrowing ultimate relations for the growth of the studio, consolidating the team, enunciating new methodological directions, obliging to a new reflection about the objectives to be pursued - the works with Gonçalo Byrne for the Lagos and the plan for the involvement of the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, the Parque do Tejo e do Trancão (with Hargreaves Associates in the initial phase), the contests for the urban parks of the Mondego (Coimbra) and Santa Sofia (Vila Franca de Xira) put themselves as designs of an exceptional nature, because of the confrontation with levels of demand previously not encountered, but also because the behaviour of the project group showed a cohesion and capacity that fulfilled the expectations.

In 1998 PROAP moved to the building in the Avenida Infante Santo, within the idea to establish better working conditions but also to respond to the demand for an increasing infrastructure (that would in fact happen, but only one year later).
Even though a change of home almost always comes together with a prominent event and the beginning of a new period of life, the truth is that the new installations were integrated in a continuous dynamic of development and consolidation that already was verified previously - development and consolidation of the more significant relationships of work (Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos, Valsassina Arquitectos, Camilo Cortesão / Mercês Vieira Arquitectos, Promontório, José Soalheiro / Teresa Castro / Paula Calheiros Arquitectos, J.A. Santos Carvalho Gefel, Intergaup, Costa Pecegueiro Arquitectos, Tirone Nunes Arquitectura, Aires Mateus Associados, Alberto Oliveira Arquitectos); development and consolidation of the market position and of the professional context; development and consolidation of the organisation structure and adaptation of the composition of the company to the organic structure of the studio; development and consolidation of the team of external consultants that permit a holistic answer to a vast conjunction of interventions; development and consolidation of the available technical means.
For this process came the profound contributing and the new establishment of other collaborations and significant partnerships - Paula Santos Arquitectos, Victor Neves Arquitectos, GITAP, Francisco Barata, José Gigante, Francisco Marinho, Neuparth Arquitectos, Utopos, CPU Consultores, Carlos Miguel Dias, Alexandre Alves Costa / Sérgio Fernandez.

Parallel to this, a remarkable tendency reaffirmed the predominance of the direct order, fundamental and amongst others of: municipalities - Oeiras, Funchal, Leiria, Barcelos, Lisboa, Gavião; protective institutions by the central administration - Parque Expo'98 S.A., Administração do Porto de Lisboa, S.A., Administração dos Portos de Setúbal e Sesimbra, S.A., Universidade Nova de Lisboa; private companies - Imoareia, S.A., CIF, S.A., Somague PMG.

The last few years, the opportunity came up to participate in some of the most relevant Portuguese projects - Parque do Tejo (Expo'98 Lisboa), rehabilitation of Baixa Portuense / Área Oeste A (Porto'2001, with Camilo Cortesão and Mercês Vieira), Leiria Polis - Planos de Pormenor da Cidade de Leiria / Sistema Rio, in co-ordination with Planorma, Viseu Polis - Planos de Pormenor da Cidade de Viseu / Cava do Viriato, PP2, PP23, PP24, Parque Urbano da Radial de Santiago, with Gonçalo Byrne, Nova Ponte Vasco da Gama – environmental and landscape consulting, studying the location of the new airport of Lisbon – and, in a way, concluded a cycle of acquiring experiences and new capacities of constructing and asserting a way of intervention, of progressive specification of a philosophy of action. This edition guides PROAP into an inevitable process of relative balance between the developed work and the reflection on the new directions that PROAP would like to go.

ABOUT THE INTERVENTION METHODS

What it's all about, above all, is a search to the functioning of things, the way the world works, the attempt to understand the processes that surrounded us and of which we are part.
There is plenty of reactions to find inside of processes, inside of creating involvements, by exploring the characteristics of a small location, not as a support of a job to be done, not like it is the setting of a transformation of which the author is the protagonist, but as the revelation of that particular place, as the revelation of its secrets, of its personality, of its processes of functioning that these days sometimes are hidden or sometimes are forgotten in what is only just a little bit evident in the uproar of the obvious, in the strong noise of what is immediately to be apprehended.
The processes are simple and they work well.

To describe them makes them more complicated, gives the object, the names, the verbs and the elements a different nature. To understand the processes, means to observe them, to interpret them, to let them happen over and over again. The only language that can describe them, is that of the processes themselves.
It is these processes, and the elements are their actors with which we work.
We observe the rotation of the shades, its distortion with the height of the sun or with the topographical forms in which they are projected, the trees, the falling of the leaves. The return to the green, the water and the wind in the water, the tides. The moon, the rivers and the sea, the sand and the land and, again, the trees and the birds.
It touches them as it were loved items, the gods of our infancy, like the things that are being loved most of all. Those things that we lose or that we know that, inevitably, we are going to lose. The projects extend themselves like this, as descriptions, of outtakes of consciousness of very vulgar operations, of processes whose image to us is always very familiar. Descriptions of passages, of journeys through landscapes, lively journeys eager to show to everybody that we come, colourful of the enthusiasm to tell something to someone.

From the site locations arise the themes that unite actions and that determine the present processes, the motives for the investigation of the universes and the motors of research. The projects organise themselves in subjects of search, in aspects of operation of the systems that in those circumstances become more evident. They practice in experiences with the sun as the driving force of the evident movements of the topography of the land, in what will be the subjects of experimentation, the height of the sun and their azimuth of incidence, and the shapes with all these parameters change through the passing of the year.
As the driving force of ecological diversity - accentuating asymmetries of the factors of biological support caused by significant differences in the incident radiation levels - it becomes in this situation a universe of research of the relationship between the different quantities of received radiation in locations of contrasting solar exposition and the vegetal communities that, in each one of those conditions, are going to live.

In any case the research involves a work mainly made at the level of the image resulting from the conditions that were studied, an image that becomes the force behind the communication with the public, making it conscious of a complex reality, making it aware of the details of that reality and of its consequences, awakening it for the excessive beauty of nature and a world of operation rules, every time more distant, ever time more hidden.
Working with topographical manipulation, creating a very determined landscape, to its image, therefore relates itself with themes of a different approach. Beyond the radiation received, be it as the medium to read a morphology, be it as a definer of very contrasting ecological contexts of a chromatic image that's also in a textural way very contrasting, other factors are used in processes of a specific research, or in a collaboration of defining the image.

In projects at waterfronts (Parque do Tejo, Esposende) the differences caused by the variation of the tides in the definition of the existing vegetation are explored in a more or less educational form, with illustrated expressions of different evidence and with a justification that's more close to the design of a project combination than it is to an autonomic element, with a referential character and centralised like a subject of observation. Another situation to focus on, also generating definitions of limits, of lines, of drawings in the landscape, are the juxtapositions of wetlands and dry lands, permitting that an evolving drawing is developed to its distinctness, invisible in the more humid periods, revealed with outstanding contrasts in the dry periods, associated to the slopes of the waterfront (Parque de Santa Sofia, Parque da Terrugem).

It develops a much controlled design that is however created through a spontaneous origin and through the repetitions assured by the persistence of the natural powers. The ratio of control is originated by the clarity in the definition of the limits and by the means where the human hand is marking them - crests of prominence, furrows, sudden transition of quota, of soil, of pendant. This control, that does not correspond to a constructive situation but that does to the conceptual formulation of the design, of the means that are chosen for its expression, guarantees some independence regarding to the quality of the construction and to the consistency of the results and of the admissible variability. Similarly a certain independence is guaranteed between the project and the conditions of maintenance, guaranteeing to her persistence of the fundamental aspects of its materialization, even in conditions of practically nonexistent maintenance. This characteristic puts the extreme fragility of the projects of landscape architecture in a highlight regarding to conditions of maintenance. As a matter of fact, a landscaping project is not finished after his construction, it does not cease evolving in the moment of the definite completion and it always has the tendency to link its definition to the fundamental circumstances of the environment.
It is with these questions that the projects have to deal.