The University City as a Total Work of Art

The construction work took more than three decades, being finished in 1975, after the fall of the regime. Although the buildings of the university city were designed by different architects, the ensemble maintains a classical uniformity.

However, like other dictatorial regimes, the Estado Novo cultivated other aesthetic languages. The choice varied according to the place, the function and the audience. We find a good example of this adaptability in the Academic Association, after descending the monumental staircase. The group of buildings designed for the oldest association in the country, which included different blocks such as canteens, theatre and rehearsal rooms, presents a bolder formal language. Despite the criticism it received, it was completed in 1962.

The university city should be understood as a total work of art. The intervention extended to every detail: to the street lamps, to the furniture inside the buildings, to the plaques identifying the spaces. The fine arts played a key role here. They were responsible for ennobling public spaces and interiors. Statues, bas-reliefs, paintings and tapestries were also vehicles of the Estado Novo ideology. The themes represented were divided between nationalism, reflected in Portuguese history and culture, and universalism, represented by Classical Antiquity. In artistic terms, academic sobriety reigns supreme. Exceptions to these themes and stylistic options appeared later. Among them is the abstract sculpture by Fernando Conduto, located in the courtyard of the Physics and Chemistry Departments, which can be accessed from Rua Larga. Conceived in the final stretch of the Estado Novo, it is the only work in the university city that allows complete freedom of interpretation, not limiting the relationship between the individual and the artistic phenomenon with a theme.