José Capela (1969) is an architect (FAUP, 1995). He earned his
PhD with a thesis titled Operating
conceptually in art. Operating conceptually in architecture. Since 2000 he
has worked as a teacher at Universidade
do Minho, where he currently lectures in architecture and
theatre. He was one of the commissioners for the 2010 Lisbon Architecture
Triennale. He is co-founder, co-artistic director and stage designer for the mala voadora theatre company since 2003.
His activity as stage designer included works with Rogério de Carvalho, João Mota, Miguel Loureiro,
Álvaro Correia, Marcos Barbosa, Teatro Praga, Mickael Oliveira/Nuno M. Cardoso,
Raquel Castro and also with the Third
Angel (UK) and Association Arsène
(FR). He writes regularly on the subjects of architecture and stage design. In
2013, he published a catalogue of stage designs titled ways of doing nothing.
2D, 3D and other D's This text is about detachment. A comparative analysis is carried out between the detachment performed (in theatre) by Bertolt Brecht and stage designer Caspar Neher and the type of detachment found (in architecture) by Manfredo Tafuri in buildings since the Renaissance. In both cases, detachment is identified where there is a dissonance between an object and its context. Both Marxists and ideologically affiliated to "historical materialism", Brecht and Tafuri advocate the practice of relativization of history through the confrontation of different historical periods (a particular way of decontextualization). Both of them believe also in the libertarian and politically destabilizing potential of detachment. However, the similarities end here. From this point onwards, the discussion evolves to identify the implications of the centrality Tafuri awards to the language of buildings, which constitutes a departure from the production issue at the basis of Brecht's materialistic "aesthetics". Finally, this difference leads to yet another divergence, related to the type of spatial device each of them works with: the difference between a stage and the opposite of a stage.