The return of the Casa dos Bicos, Lisbon, 1983

Abstract

The intervention in Casa dos Bicos (‘House of Spikes’), in Lisbon, is a transposition of Manuel Vicente’s work in Macau, a territory under Portuguese administration until 1999, now an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. From 1963 to the 1990s, Manuel Vicente designed a set of unique buildings in Macau, a practice interrupted between 1968 and 1969 when he worked with Louis Kahn. The Casa dos Bicos can be seen as in continuity with Vicente’s experience in Macau, which helps to explain the controversy it generated in the 1980s. The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake damaged the Casa dos Bicos (1521/1523) and only two of the original four floors survived. The 1983 intervention restored its façade and introduced elements of contemporary architecture. The ‘spikes’ façade was remade based on a panel of eighteenth-century azulejos (blue-glazed tiles). However, the interior is a fictionalisation of the old city, a mediaevalist figuration intersected with expressionist references in an exercise of fearless post-modernism: a fable with a monumental staircase, arches, alleys and small openings, which are intended to disorient and conceal. Thus the Casa dos Bicos is not a ‘repositioning’, neither does it opt for the morality of distinguishing the new from the old. In this inaccuracy it is radically post-modern. It disqualifies authenticity, preferring a refined set of mirrors. The façade is a replica, where the free historicism of the window frames conveys a spectral dissonance; the interior consists of ‘lights and shadows’; the ‘curtain wall’ on the rear façade has a provisional character that refers to buildings in Macau. The temporal fluency and the spatial randomness display a free enjoyment of history, equivalent to an ‘historical novel’ or perhaps a Hollywood film based on a true story. Here, the ‘presence of the past’ is not only a slogan, but a reality turned into a fantasy.