Invention and Order: The proportional contribution in João Mendes Ribeiro's architecture

Abstract

The aim of this research is to understand the role of proportion as a tool in the contemporary project regarding the methodology of the Portuguese architect João Mendes Ribeiro (JMR). On a journey marked by an alternation of disciplines (architecture and scenography [01,02, 03]) JMR stabilizes a particular methodology fertile in interdisciplinary relations that, according to our opinion, is worthy of a detailed analysis. Essence, efficacy, abstraction, and elegance are characteristics that Manuel Graça Dias underlines in the body of work of JMR, qualities naturally provided by a refinement, a delicate way of feeling and establishing proportions […], [setting] an accurate drawing [04: 14]. Geometry is the instrument in a process of high management capacity where debugging, clarity of language, and economy of means, are the result of surgical interventions capable of producing significance, flexibility and adaptability. The word proportion dominates this equation, where consistency and rigour extend from prior studies to the completion of the constructive process, in a salutary relationship between parts understood as a whole in a prevalent search for a balanced resolution. The invention of the project (as an act of creation) is supported by the order element, intellectualizing a method that revives a seemingly forgotten theme in contemporary theory: proportional value.