Project concept

For this project we have been asked how we would bring Portuguese culture into a city like Manchester. This will later be translated into an existing building. Our first area of research is to create a small film based on our own findings of Portuguese culture such as music, dance, food, Architecture etc to create a certain mood that we would like to portray to any audience.

Sunday 27 November 2011

Wine Bar



some more precedence on the feel of the wine bar, I was mostly interested in the top picture because it seemed more modern and contemporary and fitting with the concept of my plans.

Precedent- Wine

Some precedent studies for storing/displaying wine and also an old traditional way of making wine by crushing the grapes with the feet, originally I wanted to incorporate this into the higher basement with a void from the wine bar looking down onto it, it wasnt inkeeping with the feel of the building and instead opted for something more contemporary which can be seen in my drawing above.



The next stage

Higher basement plan
ground floor plan
frist floor plan
second floor plan
Third floor plan
Fourth floor plan
Section
section
above are the plans of the building that I am still working on at the moment. After much research I have decided to do a music school based on Portuguese music and I will be using 5 of the 6 floors within the Hanging Bridge building. Through precedent studies and ongoing plans I will show how my ideas have evolved into something I believe will work with the existing building.

Wednesday 16 November 2011

First buildings/initial research for site ideas


http://www.museudofado.pt/

http://www.rncm.ac.uk/whats-on-mainmenu-47.html

http://www.cornerhouse.org/

Escola Superior de Musica de Lisboa (website in Portuguese)

Here are some links to websites showing my initial ideas on what sort of concept I would like my project to follow. As my main interest was with music within Portuguese culture I decided to research buildings that had similar concepts, starting with Manchester I looked at the Corner house although this is not just music it has quite a diverse range of topics such as art and film as well as having a cafe/restaurant area. I then decided to go on and look at music museums in Portugal and came across Museo Do Fado which is self explanatory really in that it is a museum of music and instruments of music. As I had done a museum already with my last project I didnt want to end up using the same theme this time round purely so I didnt get bored. I then came up with the idea that my space could be a Portuguese music school, where people of all races/background could attend, they would pay a fee like a student and be taught by Portuguese teachers different types of Portuguese music/instruments/singing lessons/language lessons. Maybe the students could live on site and could be hired to perform at other venues or even on site in a specially designed room or as the winery is already there I could add a cafe/Restaurant and the students could perform there to paying customers. I then looked at RNCM in Manchester which is obviously on a much larger scale but shows the same sort of theme.

Manchester Cathedral Visitor Centre - The Bridge

Although the project is not based on the Hanging bridge and the surrounding area I thought it was relevant to research a small amount of history in order to place portuguese culture within the Mynshull building correctly. Above is a video about Manchester cathedral and the bridge that runs beneath Mynshull house.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LzetyhsfCLo

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Hanging Bridge aka Mynshull's House (project site)

The Manchester group visited the site today, below are some of the pictures I have taken of both the site and the surrounding area. Although written on the side of the building are the words "Hanging Bridge" it is not actually the name of the building. The name is that of the bridge (1343) that runs beneath the building and through the chapel which has had a change of name at least three times to date, the words derived from the Old English 'hen', meaning wild birds, and the Welsh 'gan', meaning between two hills ( Hengand brigge). The name of the site we are studying is actually called Mynshull's House believed to be from the 1890's (rebuilt in red sandstone with terracotta embelishments)but founded in 1682 originally , a grade two listed building, owned by a chemist that gave apprenticeships to poor sound and healthful boys of Manchester. joint as part of the same building is a winery "the hanging ditch". Both the building and the bridge have a long and interesting history which unfortunately will not be looked at in this project but I do look forward to incorporating Portuguese culture into it, hopefully being able to keep many of its original features.




















Monday 14 November 2011

My interpretation on Portuguese culture

After gathering all my research I put together a small film to best describe my interpretation of Portuguese culture. I tried to create a few different moods within the film: the first section showing daytime Portugal with slow relaxing music, the second section showing carnival and festivals with a more upbeat soundtrack, third section is food and Fado music to show how they eat tea later in the day usually within small bars or restaurants playing fado music and finally the fourth section shows maybe leaving and walking into the street to hail a cab to end the night.

Sunday 13 November 2011

Fados - Trailer of Carlos Saura's movie

Fado a music from Portugal

Eurovision 2009 - Portugal - Flor-de-Lis - Todas As Ruas Do Amor

celebrations/festival

Most festivals or celebrations in Portugal begin in June and carry on through out the rest of the year. Here are some of the festivals that I found most interesting such as the Fotki tray festival, Desfohlada and my favourite the Quiemas das Fitas festival which is an annual burning of ribbons celebration for graduating students all over portugal, each ribbon depending on the colour represents each department within the university, people then line the streets partying with extra entertainment like floats and performances by famous bands.


Transport




When doing my research I noticed that the portuguese street tram popped up a lot in photos even if I didnt type it in to the search engine, although I have never really been to Portugal it became obvious that this form of transport plays a big part in everyday life as well as taxis. Other researchv (which I have not yet included showed grafitti or 'designed trams' as a form of restoration or recycling by the younger generation.

Theatre

I wasnt as interested to look at theatre, poetry or literature as I struggle with being interested in these areas within British culture and dont know much about it, so to look at these areas from another culture, i did find quite hard. Luckily theatre was never big on gaining a name for the dramatic arts but more music or poetry. "revista" is well known in Portugal as a type of humorous, comic like form of performance. Gil Vicente, Antonio Ferreira, Almeida Garrett and Bernardo Santareno are well known playwriters as shown below