Resumen de The mutation of the Ofir’s pinewood in seaside resort: The residential model variation between 1940-2010
The first urban plan created to transform Ofir’s pinewood (a beach area above Oporto city) in a seaside resort occurred on the decade of 1940 when, by a private initiative, was asked to a young architect named Alfredo Ângelo de Magalhães (1919-1988) to design an urban plan and its equipment (such restaurant, hotel, swimming pool, etc) and some private dwelling houses. In the following decades, were built, on the lots of the primitive urbanized areas, some other dwelling houses, such one of the most important house of Portuguese twentieth century architecture – “Casa de Ofir” (1957) projected by the architect Fernando Távora (1923 – 2005). These dwelling houses try, almost of the cases, to insert themselves on the landscape, using it as an important agent that increases the project and the view systems.However, in the 1970’s, for this territories where projected multifamily buildings – three 12 levels - with new kinds of typologies such one bedroom flats, starting the touristic massification in Ofir. On these new projects the landscape is no longer on contact with the house; it is a valued element to marketing. At the same time, some other hotels were developed for this territory, changing its skyline. With the real estate boom of the 1980’s and 1990’s, were built some other multifamily buildings with smaller dimensions, but with leisure equipment such swimming pools or tennis courts. These buildings were developed among the original urban plan’s principal avenues, changing, significantly, the landscape because pine trees were felled.Since 2000’s the paradigm of beach living has changed, and the touristic resorts follow the gated condominium, with a few dwelling houses, small groups of apartments and leisure equipment inside it. In this situation the impact on landscape is not so hard. However this kind of territorial intervention always changes the original flora, witch causes a long-term problem.The occurred changes on the civil construction in Portugal, with a smaller number of new buildings, is making that only the middle-high and high classes are able to build new dwelling houses, that are being implanted in the few primitive urbanized areas’ non-built lots.The present essay wants to, in a first moment, study the residential typology’s evolution between 1940 and 2010, associating it to the evolution occurred in tourism. In a second moment, more important, it wants to understand the impact of those typologies in this territory (on the urban design field) and in this landscape (on the identity image of this territory).To support this survey will be used some original photographs of Alfredo Ângelo de Magalhães’s archive, and some actual images. This essays tries to be a lecture about the conception of the landscape and image of a living territory in a permanent mutation.
