Health Architectures in the second half of the 19th century and the teaching models in portuguese academies

Abstract

The historical intertwining of production hospitals in Brazil and Portugal in the second half of the nineteenth century demands to understand the context of training and academic work of its designers, highlighting the fundamental matrix formation up to: the drawing as design technique and representation of architecture. In this essay, we will adopt the Warburg point of view to understand the History of Art as part of a Theory of Culture, where several factors contribute to the assembly of an iconographic constellation to be read in transdisciplinary sense to allow renovate and expand the existing historical canons. Thus, the iconography will serve as evidence for the understanding of the historical, aesthetic and social role of hospitals understood as urban monuments in their respective contexts. The objects in study are the Hospital Dom Luis I of the Royal Society Portuguese Beneficent in Belém, designed in 1870 by the former student of the Academy of Fine Arts of Lisbon Frederico José Branco and the Psychiatric Hospital of Conde de Ferreira. The last belongs to Holy House of Mercy of Porto, built for this purpose in 1868, under the traces of the engineer and Full Professor of Civil Architecture Chair of the Fine Arts Academy Port Manuel de Almeida Ribeiro. These buildings are icons of the Portuguese capital investments in Brazil and Brazilian called 'return-trip' in Portugal, representing the Portuguese-Brazilian relations in the second half of the nineteenth century.