Revealing the Place: Sacred Architecture along the Portuguese Coastline

Abstract

Revealing the place addresses the referential role of sacred architecture elements that dot the Portuguese Atlantic coastline in contemporary architectural pedagogy and in the practice of architecture. The long Portuguese coastline, the case study of the research, is dotted with sacred architectural elements—sanctuaries, churches, chapels and crosses—oriented according to both compositional and canonical cosmological principles. The character of the space of articulation between the land and the sea is made evident by the tension between the sacred elements and the landscape. This paper addresses this relation, resorting to decomposition interpretative drawings and arguments that uncover the formal relationships between sacred architecture and the landscape, proposing an interpretative reading of the built elements that combines type and place. Furthermore, it discusses the transposition of composition principles from sacred to secular architecture, building an analogy for the typological transfer process, considering the transference of existing qualities in sacred architecture for contemporary architectural projects. The hypothesis discussed is that the decoding of the architectural composition of sacred elements in the landscape remains useful both in the pedagogy and practice of architecture. Finally, it is evidenced that this exercise allows us to transfer formal relations established between sacred buildings and the landscape for contemporary architectural practice, revealing type and topos.