Porfírio Pardal Monteiro and the Global Design

Abstract

The search for the concept and the practise of a “total project” or “global project” in architecture, in the sense of the project that integrates various artistic and technical disciplines and which reflects itself as a coherent and constructed whole, are the guiding principles to explore the relationship of architecture with works of art and with other diversified technical fields, in reference to the “total work of art” concept. The architectural concept that Porfírio Pardal Monteiro (1897–1957) will come to defend, revolves around the integration of the various fields of engineering and the integration of the plastic arts, assuming that architecture ceases to exist without the interaction of those two domains. A third domain can be added to these two, which is that of industrial (or product) and furniture design.