Date: 11th June 2015

Time: 12:00 pm

Venue: IDS, Building 8, GTU, 75 Kostava Street, Tbilisi

Event: Design architecture build the city. Beginning the empty space, Becoming a place

Format: Illustrated Lecture

Speaker: Prof. Pedro Rodrigues, PhD. FAU Lisboa, Portugal

Poster © Giga Khatiashvili

Pedro Rodrigues came on the footsteps of his colleagues from Portugal and delivered a delightful account of a quarter of the century of his practice focusing mainly on the importance of relations between a place and the architectural object - guiding strategy of all of his works. His most emotional endeavors

are related to memories of his father, the neighborhood, the village. The St. Estevão House project seeks to incorporate the void as a part of the program; the Pontalgar House project stresses the relations between program/ site and position/ landscape; Pedro’s most striking project to date – a plain long block of a concrete, the 2009 Fundação António Sardinha, a social care institution – is conceptualized around connection between the landscape and the place, characterized by a steep valley and a strong dominance of pine tree located at south. The volumetric position creates a frame that enhances the landscape and the view. The students and teachers of the IDS were equally impressed by the simplicity and refinement of Pedro Rodrigues’ designs evoking the principles long formulated for architecture and furniture design by the great Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, once a director of the Bauhaus – “less is more”.