Glicínias Housing

In a country like Portugal, where education still lags behind for most of the population, taste -like other matters- is still in that phase in which it requires some kind of reform. As taste affects the reception of architecture -as much as it does any other cultural production- this is also a question that has to be dealt with by architects. Ricardo Vieira de Melo, architect of this housing block in Aveiro, not only participates in the improvement of taste that is slowly and subversively sweeping the country, he also manages to produce exciting, powerful and non-conformist architecture at the same time. The rationale behind his undulating aluminium façades is both technical and aesthetic. They reduce noise pollution from a busy road. They reduce the bulk of the building. They echo and augment the dynamic movement of traffic. And last, but not least, they abandon the geometric rigidity of the modernist slab. And at the same time, however, these façades are engaged in altering taste.