Bodiansky, the café terrace of Aurora and the dream of so many summer nights

Abstract

I began to write this text in the Summers of my childhood. No Vidago. And in Chaves. In Largo General Silveira, under the stars. Let's see the last locomotive. Meticulously, collecting pine nuts on the lawns of the Palace pool. Smoking the first Definitive with the Groom of my grandparents' Hotel. On the back wall. At night, on the esplanade of Cafe Aurora listening to the adults. Nadir Afonso and my father. To hear them talk about the problems of painting. Of the essential characteristics that separate architecture from painting. Of the spatial and typological criteria, and of the gravity that assures the essentially structural and constructive nature of the architectural project. Of the concrete properties of earth and sky. From the phenomenology of "natural space".