The object of the present thesis is the architectural production designed and built between 1895 and 1925 in Porto and the North of Portugal. This is a time of profound changes in the panorama of Portuguese architecture in which the different ideological/disciplinary trends that determine the various issues that mark the twentieth century are defined.
To date, the architecture of Porto and Northern Portugal of this period has been reduced in Portuguese architectural historiography to the work of some architects who, by the absence of transversal studies to the architectural production and the disciplinary culture of this period, are commonly considered as isolated paradigmatic figures. For this reason, this thesis establishes a re-framing of the eclectic architecture of Porto and Northern Portugal in the cultural and professional panorama of twentieth century architecture, listing the various architectural designers active in the local context and placing them within the international disciplinary trends and the issues that mark the Portuguese architectural debate. Likewise, in this thesis we identify the contribution of the architecture of eclecticism to the contemporary definition of today's urban image. We propose an analysis of the erudite architectural production carried out in Porto and its region of influence based on an extensive inventory of the eclectic architecture in the territory under study, documenting the activity of the agents involved in it, identifying their architectural production and its characteristics. The research is done either through the study of primary sources cross-referenced with information sourced in printed sources of the time, or through the analysis of the bibliography that has recently brought some light on specific themes, as well as through inventory and observation of the buildings that still exist today. In this context, it is worth highlighting the relevance of the identification of authorships to the several projects and works by comparing graphic and architectural elements.
The internal organization of this work allows us to identify the moments and issues that define the architecture of eclecticism in the territory under analysis, the main architects that mark their professional panorama and the different ideological/disciplinary trends that characterize the debate around architecture and the city. The study of the architecture built along two of the main urban axes that mark the development of the city of Porto throughout the period under study allows us to identify how different architectural designers and clienteles are confronted with similar urban and programmatic contexts.