Three Drawings for Three Stories about Portuguese Cultural Heritage

Resumo

This article aims to discuss the specificity of three author’s projects to elaborate about the partnership between traditional economic sectors and design as added value regarding cultural heritage as framework for sustainable solutions. The scenery of intervention is the refurbishment of a single-family home that motivated the creation of three types of products: an entrance door, an armed chair with a footstool and eight carpets. The three projects started from hand drawings of one of the architects of the architecture office in charge of the assignment. In this text it is considered the concept of home and surrounding objects from an organic, human centred perspective, recalling, among others, essays as Bauen Wohnen Denken from Martin Heidegger and Rationalism and Man from Alvar Aalto as key texts that give the note of this text’s approach. The analysis goes further by addressing the product’s development process through the immersive collaboration of the architects with the client, technicians, workers of the chosen factories, namely metalwork, carpentry/carving and hand knotting. Finally, in this article it is to remark that these projects are a significant example to illustrate the partnership that can be experienced between arts & crafts production and design proposals. In effect, the craft industry that remains in the market with competitive parameters is the one that adapts techniques and skills of the tradition and innovates in concepts.