History

On 27th November 1779, in Oporto, the Public Lesson in Drawing and Design was set up by Decree of D. Maria I and in 1834, Architecture was specifically defined as an area of teaching, integrated within the Oporto Academy of Fine Art.
The 1881 reform founded the Oporto School of Fine Art, separating it from the Academy, but an independent course in architecture, despite being greatly requested, was not established until 1911.
Anticipating the need for improved professional and cultural training for architects, the 1932 reform was finally followed by the reform of 1957, which is still partially in force.
The system of teaching and learning that was put into practice in the College of Fine Arts in Oporto in 1967, as a result of a strong critical movement that arose within the College, introduced profound alterations to the functioning of the 1957 reform and gave the college complete autonomy in relation to the Courses of Painting and Sculpture.
In the 20 years in the life of this institution, and the 17 years of transmission of accumulated knowledge, within a history of the Oporto School that stretches back 200 years (a legacy which is constantly being augmented by the experience and reflections of daily life in the context of newly emerging problems), the college has followed the programme announced by Prof. Fernando Távora in the speech delivered by him at the inauguration ceremony of the Faculty of Architecture:
“With the creation of the new Faculty, the old course in Architecture of the Oporto College of Fine Arts will close. It is certainly with great regret that we abandon an Institution, which, for such a long time, successfully reconciled the universal and the circumstantial, an art that is difficult in any time or place.
At the same time, it is with sadness that we find ourselves separating from our brothers, the painters and sculptors – now also separated from each other –whom we hope to see soon recognised with the university degree that they deserve.
The “barbarity of specialisation’, whose sin I think we all recognise, and which had already, by the 19th century, in Oporto, separated the arts and sciences into the Academy and the Polytechnic, continues to harass us, now dividing up “the family of fine art”.
But if we are saying goodbye with sadness to the old, yet always young, College of St Lazarus, it is certainly with great honour that we enter the renowned University of Oporto, of which Your Honour is Magnificent Rector, re-encountering other brothers – those of the Sciences and Letters – who were also ours until recently separated.
And we enter deservedly, we claim immodestly, since it is incomprehensible that only today have architects become considered central figures in our culture, and therefore deserving of a university education.