São João de Deus is a place that seems to have been born under the sign of violence. With the construction of the Bairro de Rebordões, between 1941 and 1944, this marginal place in the city of Porto was the scene of the most profound oscillations in public housing policies, and the instability of the public and private life of those who lived there.

Despite this, São João de Deus never lost its magical light. At the time of publishing this book, a renovation and expansion work is being completed for the houses whose architectural design, by Nuno Brandão Costa, seeks to bring new hope to the place. For several years, the photographer André Cepeda followed the life of São João de Deus, in a close relationship between the look, the space, its nature and its experiences.

Through the image, this book seeks to combine the different times of the place, and to show the work and construction of architecture as part of a time and a history. The texts by Pedro Levi Bismarck and Sérgio Mah go through the pages of housing policies and the culture of the image to consolidate, in the book designed by Pedro Nora, the synthesis of a place, a brief lapse in time of the construction of architectural forms and ways of life in São João de Deus.