Serralves Foundation decided to organise a conference on Jacques Gréber (1882-1962), the French planner and architect, responsible for designing Serralves Park. We know that Casa de Serralves is the product of many authors and also where the interventions of its owner, Carlos Alberto Cabral, 2nd count of Vizela (1895-1968) and of the architect José Marques da Silva (1869-1962) are very much in evidence. 

Jacques Gréber graduated as an architect from the Ecole de Beaux Arts de Paris in 1909 and worked for much of his career on the American continent (USA and Canada) in town planning and garden design but also in Europe, mainly France. His park and garden projects to a certain extent mark the end of the great properties/estates of the American industrialists inspired by the French classical garden in the style of André Le Nôtre. His intervention in Serralves, which dates from 1932, may be considered as a final example. In 1937, Gréber was the head architect of Paris International Exposition.

Jacques Gréber taught Robert Auzelle (1913-1983), an incontestable figure of the city of Porto, who produced the city’s plan of 1962. The idea behind this conference was to deepen this coincidence and inspired by Jacques Gréber seize this opportunity to explore the relationship between garden art and town planning and revisit feats and influences in the city of Porto of the 1930s to the 60s, using Serralves as a privileged venue in which to reflect on and discuss architecture, garden art and town planning.

This conference was certainly of great interest to a wide range of professional figures engaged in city and garden design, as well as students and investigators.

Curators: Teresa Andresen, Manuel Fernandes de Sá
Production: João Almeida, Herminia Couto, Ana Oliveira

ECTP-CEU was one of the partners of this conference.

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