Homeland 2

The Future is the Beginning
A doric column to reveal a material

and immaterial persistence needed
in the nowadays cultural and
social precariousness p.17
Understand the
informality of cities
No matter what rurality

or post-rurality are
Four perspectives to deepen the

debate of informality in
the contemporary city p.21
to rethinking the notion of

homeland as something that goes
beyond soil and blood p.37
homeland
News from Portugal
August
2014
02
14th International
Architecture
Exhibition
Venice
DIRECTOR Pedro Campos Costa
New lexicons of
hospitality P.14
A well-behaved squatt at
66 Avenida dos Aliados,
Porto. Legal, acknowledged,
agreed. Subsequently, it is
not a squatt. So what is it?
The right to
have a house P.18
Portuguese
Pavilion
Peopleless
Homes:
Extensively distributed in three different editions, over the six month period
of the exhibition, Homeland, News
from Portugal intends to report news
about current architectural, social
and economic life in Portugal, reflecting on and informing about a variety
of aspects of the modernization of the
country over the past 100 years.
Specifically, Homeland aims to address the issues raised by architect
Rem Koolhaas (Fundamentals - Absorbi ng Moder n it y: 1914-2014)
through a critical and purposeful reflection on housing, a field of excellence for experimenting with modernity which has always been an essential element of urban and rural environments and a social and cultural reflection of its inhabitants.
Housing policies in Portugal

during the twentieth century
and the dream of April 25
Change from
the within P.22
A contribution for the
debate concerning the
built environment vs global
capital schism
Lisbon Skyline
handbook P.26
porto
Mapping the Vacant Housing in 18 of Portugal's

District Capitals reveals the shocking numbers of
a shocking national framework: 735,128 vacant
dwellings. But what these startling statistic show can
also be seen as a new opportunity for people p. 04
lisboa
Marta onofre
Total of vacant houses
735,128
12.5%
On the making the handbook

to put forward, more than
an architectural output, a
political and social strategy
to rehabilitation.
Back to the
classics P.30
Talking with Sami Architects
on architecture and being an
architect, on the detached
house and on the space of
intimacy
Towards a new
rural model?P.34
Planning a new kind of place.
Not quite urban? Definitely
not suburban?, Yet not really
rural any more?
a landscape of
opportunities
Rehabilitating
rehabilitation
With its conception of rehabilitation
that is absolutely contemporary and offers the individual perspective of the
architect (and of his/her role in general), it is Tvoras proposal in particular
that has nowadays acquired a new, specific relevance. This is owed to an inclusive character that it acknowledges
or proposes (by associating physical
action to social intervention), as well
as by the social and cultural dimension
of what is at stake: People are worth
infinitely more than houses and by
the emphasis placed on the importance
of participation (active, not merely acquiescent). Above all, Tvoras proposal stands out for the enduring lessons
that the past assures the future, as it
establishes a principle that postulates
and synthesizes its entire programme,
that of continuation-through-innovation, in a constant movement for
change towards better conditions, but
respecting the positive values that may
exist and should not, therefore, be destroyed. This encompasses the surpassing of the dichotomy between major art practices/minor art practices
and the rejection of pastiche. p. 29
On Portuguese
theatre &
Arquiteturas
film festival P.38
Homeland, August 2014
2 NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Highlights
SOCIETY
Pedro Bandeira
A tribute to Greek culture and to their
heritage of democracy to counter the cultural and social precariousness in which
we live today. Maybe its time to reinvent
the primitive P.17
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL 3
Interview
Interview
The city, a ghetto of different forms of knowledge

Interview with Gonalo Byrne BY PEDRO CAMPOS COSTA & SUSANA VENTURA
ECONOMY
Pedro Costa
Informality is a key-issue in socioeconomic and urban structuring these days.
But dealing with the informal in contemporary cities demands more integrated
approaches, citizens involvement, flexibility and accountability. P.21
POLITICS
Joo Lus Ferreira

The housing cooperative is a very powerful
lesson about freedom and compromise.
And it's in this compromise, with all that it
means, that architecture is more than aesthetics and becomes ethics. P.25
CULTURE
Jos Aguiar,
Vitor Ribeiro
Miguel Reimo
Costa
Cabea Padro, Jos-Augusto Frana and
Fernando Tvora, three innovative models
as opposed to the alleged inevitability of the
need for substitution and sanitization in urban
renewal as embraced by Modernism. P.29
INTERNATIONAL
Jos Manuel
Fernandes
Portuguese architecture in the Atlantic
Islands: the influence of the motherland
and the ability to generate distinct forms
and spaces, whose character is rooted in
their striking local environments. P.33
TERRITORY
lvaro Domingues
Reflecting after the use and addressees
of the nostalgic discourse about land, biological agriculture, the new rurals, rural
tourism and other ruralities. P.37
Vacant housing in
Portugal 2014 P.4-P.13
Gonalo loureno
From the shocking numbers that report
that in Portugal there are 735,128 vacant
dwellings, 1,860 million or 31% more
dwellings than families, but that there
are still approximately 30 000 families
living in slums and more than half
million families living in overcrowded
homes, comes the idea to map this
reality as a way to inform, alert and
harshly criticize Using the open-source
Geographic Information System (GIS)
named QuantumGIS, a large quantity
of geographic data is processed and
visualized with the help of cartographic
editing tools.
joana oliveira &

zara ferreira
Peopleless Homes - a Landscape of
opportunities
Andr pais
Project "Foreclosures"
travel p.39
Herbert Wright
A travel in the north to see why
Portugal's house architecture is unique
In his work, as well as in the thought

process developed alongside his
practice, Gonalo Byrne has been
questioning several problems concerning
contemporary cities and the simultaneous
processes of sedimentation (the
acceptance of the gift of history, whilst
having a selective critical eye) and
transformation (as contemporary actions
cannot be alienated from their own status,
when they express a current culture).
These two major themes occur mainly
within his practice in which Gonalo Byrne
rehearses and tests the rehabilitation
problems concerning the contemporary
city, as we can see in his most recent
projects. At the National Museum Machado
de Castro, he faced two thousand years of
history, which demanded a simultaneous
reading of the stratified layers and the
necessity for unity around its assets. In his
project for the Bank of Portugal, alongside
Joo Pedro Falco de Campos, he brought
back the original purpose of the Pombalino
block, integrating and transforming the
So Julio Church into a museum. In turn,
in the Thalia Theater, a collective project
with Barbas Lopes Architects, the ruins
lead to a clarification of the building's
former functions through the use of simple
volumes without recurring to symbols
or metaphors. In these, as in many of his
works, there isnt any orthodox theory
of rehabilitation, but it is clear that the
sensibility arises from the approach to the
project through a reading that crosscuts
all different forms of cultural expression.
On a Saturday morning, we went to
Gonalo Byrne's studio, interested in
understanding his many ideas about the
rehabilitation of cities and in how we have
become stuck in this magma of repulsion
over rehabilitation and, at the same time,
for contemporaneity itself. Nevertheless,
instead of answers, we found a lucidity
of examination, precision and rigour, a
singular perception of culture, history
and politics and an idea of what is territory
and its conditions. It wasnt an interview,
but a moment of learning. The relationship
between Portuguese architecture and
culture, territory and politics might be
vague for many. And, if that is so, this
interview should help make it clearer.
Today, city centres

(but not only) seem
once again to be in
crisis. Nevertheless,
they also seem to inscribe the solution.
Being difficult, especially in the European
context, to urbanize
at the rhythm of the
last years, could a citys rehabilitation, whether of its centre or periphery, be a solution?
GB: I was going to say exactly that, because when we speak of rehabilitation,
we usually speak about the city centre.
It is a situation particular to us, in the
European context. I remember that in
1993 in a Seminar in Sicily about rehabilitation and housing, a place where
there are still many problems in the historical centre, one of the speakers saying
that, in Italy, 70% of the construction
concerned rehabilitation whereas the
other 30% was new construction. Listening to those numbers, I thought: In
Portugal, rehabilitation must be around
0.5%. That means that there were two
major problems being built in a very effective manner. One was leaving the
centres to themselves and the other
handing over the suburban outskirts to
the logic of the market, with all the problems that were already inherited, filling
the periphery with supply, especially, in
the outer cities rings. Portugal has that
problem, because the country is basically the metropolitan area of Lisbon
and only after, quite far after, the metropolitan area of Porto.
about the common ground. Maybe a

certain elite speaks (which is important, I dont say it isnt), because there
are people of this elite developing interesting thoughts, namely Koolhaas, calling to our attention certain critical aspects. However, something is missing:
what happens when all of that meets
reality. I am not saying that one should
make tabula rasa of the different forms
of knowledge. We know why they historically exist, but we are talking in
closed circles. This idea, that everything that is transformation is vital for
the city, is an outrage to its memory.
The memory of the city is not exactly
what the historians have in mind. All
these values are not static. Identity itself is always being recreated. Memory
is always being recreated. I wouldnt
say that it doesnt have a repercussion
all around it, but there is a difference in
saying that everything around it is lyophilised, frozen. Or, in architectonic
language, transformed into a Monument, a moment when the collective is
aware of its past, but then gives itself to
the luxury of not having a use for it. But,
obviously, it has to be paid for. There
isnt anything in the physical world of
cities that doesnt demand maintenance. Nothing is eternal, not even the
Egyptian Pyramids. This idea results
from a culture that goes through this
way, it brings some questions into evidence, but at the same time generates
many contradictions.
Ilustration: Ana Arago
PCC: Thats a very polemic statement. Why do you say it? Do you consider that the metropolitan area of
Lisbon is more compact, more defined, less dispersed?
GB: Its only a question of statistics,
presented in the coldness of numbers.
The metropolitan area of Lisbon has, approximately, three million people, which
corresponds to a third of the national
population, and according to the forecasts, by 2030, it will have grown and correspond to half of the national population, about five million inhabitants.
PCC: Another 20% to 30% in the
metropolitan area of Porto and the
rest of Portugal will be empty.
GB: I wouldnt say empty, but the population will be mainly settled along the
coast line or the famous Atlantic axis,
which runs from the Galicia, North of
Spain to Setbal. In fact, our Galician
friends are staring at Portugal much
more than we are looking at them. It
has been for many years that I have integrated the jury of a Galician prize
(the Juana de Vega Architecture Prize)
and when we were discussing the TGV,
they didnt understand why it was all
about a high speed railway line between Lisbon and Madrid, because
what they wanted was to use the TGV
and come to Setbal. And it makes
sense, since its the third densest axis
in Iberia. The first axis is the one that
comes from Toulon and passes through
Barcelona which I believe is called the
Mediterranean axis; the second corresponds to the metropolitan area of Madrid, which is extremely wide and eco-
(left)
nomically powerful, and, then, immediately after, comes the Atlantic axis.
PCC: Even though its a very interesting theme, weve run away from the
main question about rehabilitation.
GB: Indeed, I drifted completely
away In terms of rehabilitation Portugal is at the tail of Europe. It is a process
that took a long time to kick off for several reasons, some of which didnt affect our neighbours Spain, where we
may find several fine examples and references such as Barcelona, Vitoria and
Santiago de Compostela, among others. I think that it is due to the strategic
measures in planning that were taken
after Francos death, one year after our
revolution, and which didnt exist here,
in Portugal. They delved into planning
in much more powerful way and with a
If old, the city

is property of
historians and
archaeologists;
if in conflict, of
sociologists; if in
transformation, it
is wrongly claimed
as property of
the architects
strategic vision. In Portugal, that situation didnt exist. After the revolution
of the 25th of April of 1974, there was a
prolonged state of indefinition. There
was a period right after PREC very focused in the SAAL operations. Its a
very open movement, difficult to converge into concrete actions, which
moreover started to come undone
when in two years the governments had
slipped to the right. Thus, urban management was left to a very case by case
type of management with some exceptions such as the cases of vora and
Setbal. Manuel Salgado is connected
to both, for example. Up North, there is
the case of Guimares and Nuno Portas
came to be vice-president of Vila Nova
de Gaia. Fernandes de S was called to
the Municipal Hall of Braga. Nonetheless, it was all very piecemeal.
In effect, we had the problem of frozen
rents. During the time of Salazar, that
was not so much of a problem, because
inflation was very low. But, after the revolution of the 25th of April, inflation shot
up dramatically and the governments
didnt have the courage to think about it
since its an extremely sensitive problem.
Evidently, that contributed to the ageing
of the city. I have been saying for some
years now, that cities have never been as
vulnerable as they are today, because of
the speed of transformation. It is known
that in one month a new city with five million inhabitants is born while many other
cities shrink or even disappear, including
important some cities. In this specific
context, there is a loss of people living in
the centre to new centralities, close to
highways junctions and shopping malls...

PCC: But also because the word
demolition became a taboo.
GB: That taboo has helped the city
destroy itself.
PCC: Rehabilitation is an idea
ever more present in the architectonic discourse (and not only) that nevertheless has been helping to exacerbate
certain extreme positions such as a
conservative elitism against everything that is modern or may change
what was already there. Do you think
that today, and in cities where everything seems to be considered heritage,
it is possible to oppose this idea?
GB: It is possible, but we need to fight
against an idea that is culturally rooted.
The city is the production of humanity,
and, from the cultural point of view,
very complex. Contrary to what would
be normal, the city has been transformed into a ghetto of different forms
of knowledge, before the ghetto of rich
and poor, which is a consequence of
that. If old, the city is the property of
historians and archeologists; if it isa
city in conflict, it is the property of the
sociologists; if it is in transformation, it
is wrongly claimed as property of the
architects. We are all looking at our
own belly button, especially architects.
I speak for myself, for what I know and
have seen. If we listen to architects talk
about the city Today, we talk more
about the city as a common cultural territory, like the last biennial Common
Ground, curated by David Chipperfield, and intended to be, but, in truth,
the biennial ended not talking much
Napoleonic land register, 1808-1811
PCC: The idea of living geographies, as you mention several times

in your approach to architecture, already incorporates many of your design or practical answers to these
questions, which in turn also denotes
a particularity that comes from a singular reading of each case. Could it be
a new approach concerning also what
has been happening in Italy, for instance, where you have been teaching
and working for a long time now(where
several times theory has smashed the
chances of action and condemned cities to a slow death)?
GB: Living geography is a very ancient notion. I had the luck of having a
fantastic geography Professor. In the
first year at the University, we had physical geography, and, in the second year,
we had human geography. When we
pass from one to the other, what is typical between the so-called Nature and
what is the artefact or artifice happens.
The human geography is no more than
the humanisation of physical geography.
I prefer the Italian term: the antropologizzazione of the physical geography.
The city is that, as well as the landscape,
it results from that intersection. Why do
I say living? In the city as in the landscape, the historian has the need to cut
sections along time to study the relation
between what goes on in peoples heads
and what is artistic production. The architect is at the opposite side of this. A
project is, by definition, a contemporary
activity. When I say this, people usually
stare at me, because historians have defined that contemporary art is the one
that is closer in time to our experience,

50, 30, 20, 10 years. In his decisions, the
architect uses the contemporary culture, the one that belongs to that very
moment. Then, he may opt to be mimetic or another thing, but it doesnt cease
to be an option of the present.
In Italy, the academic world has a series of problems which come from a long
time ago. Lecturers in Architecture
Schools are not selected based on their
architectonic production, but on a form
of career-ism largely intellectualised
and, at the beginning, marked by an ideological point of view. It is easier to say
that today than it was before, because
the city was in the hands of speculation
and it has created a very large rift, where
architecture was fabricating its own culture, all around its belly button, standing outside of the city.
It is obvious that we need to have a
historical consciousness, but we are
also part of this world. In Italy, another
illusion was created, one in which the
architect is the owner of the city, and it
happens several times when they have
a small project, they disarray it, using
it to test a certain theory, but then one
does not understand it
PCC: We cannot alienate that contemporary condition.
GB: Exactly. When I look at these
digital prints of the city, which are systems that are not still, I recognise that,
in the historical centres, there are expressions of resistance and perennial
(right)
the historic continuum of city), at the

same time that emphasises another
venetian idea of occupying and living
the roof in the famous altane (a kind
of roof on the roof). Can you tell us a
little bit more about this project of
yours and what does it mean in a city
like Venice?
GB: We are celebrating, more or less,
100 years of the destruction project thats what the war is - wherein people
and the military entertained themselves thinking and designing like us,
architects: how are we going to destroy
this and that. They had an amazing success, especially because it came during
a period of great vigour of the vanguards and of the culture of the new,
named by the historians as the destroyers. But when the destroyers period is mentioned, the war is not, which
is strange. These wars, that had destroyed on a large scale, created a mass
demand for construction. The only example, that escaped the rule and one of
the most talked about, is probably Warsaw, reconstructed in the old fashion
way. I think that the story is not properly told, because the city was not
bombed, but it was burnt from the Hebrew ghetto. Therefore, it was not as
much about redoing, as it is said, when
much of the faades were already there.
Just to say that all this movement for
conservation makes, in fact, sense.
There has been a spectacle of destruction whether by plan, by the war or by
Map of Venice by Combatti, 1847
things that make sense, but take Siena,

for example, which has an extremely
vibrant historical centre, and if we enter the houses, they have lifts and, obviously, they have bathrooms Its not argued about, but when they were built,
they didnt have them. They are assuring a contemporary way of living and
not the one that was at their origin.
PCC: We are in the context of the
Venice Architecture Biennale. Venice is a city where everything is considered heritage and everything is
raised to the scale of God. We know
that you have a project in Venice that
seeks to recover a previous condition of the city, lost in time (which in
itself already reveals that this obstructive idea against contemporary
interventions didnt make part of
Architecture
should never have
left the street.
Culturally, has
always been a
bridge. In some
cases, it was
most striking,
as for example
in pop culture
the argument that comes from the

past:hygiene. Venice is, in fact, a very
singular case, starting immediately with
its genesis, an extremely powerful maritime power and culturally very developed, but when it started to loose power,
the Lords moved to firm land. Venice
continued to be the head, but in more of
a representative way, and it entered into
modernity precisely with an economical
problem. All the strong economic activities - petrochemical, steel mills, shipyards, industry - went to Mestre. And all
the wealth that came from the naval activity went to agriculture.
Venice, a petrified historical jewel,
started to loose life. Its always the same
problem: it becomes empty. And in very
dangerous ways despite titanic efforts, as
was the case of bringing the University to
Venice or creating international events
and taking advantage of the enormous
quality of the city, not only of its architecture as well as of sculpture and painting.
Venice has an incredible treasure, which
it is beginning to monetise with tourism.
A landscape totally built, with an incredible density. There is a very strong movement concerning conservation, which I
understand, but Venice will have to pay
the price for being, the entire city itself,
in the best of cases, a museum, because,
at the opposite, at the worst, it runs the
risk of becoming a Disneyland.
This is a very important question that
has to do with the housing project that we
have been designing for Venice. There
are several interesting works by Gino
Valle, Cino Zucchi, Siza - a beautiful project of which unfortunately only one
building was built - Gardella in Giudecca,

a very curious case
The site for the project has historically suffered the inverse process. It
used to be, in the 19th Century, a very
porous terrain and, still in the beginning of the 20th Century, with the
growth of the modern hospital fabric,
a kind of barrier was created which, in
my opinion, goes against what that part
of the city was when it was alive. The
project works on three concepts of that
physical geography of Venice. The first
is to replace that historical porosity,
which existed, and has a lot to do with
the Venetian micro-capillarity, which
is beautiful. The second is a type of public space, which is not so present in the
Fondamenta, and corresponds to a totally vertical space, very narrow, where
the sky is just a tiny strip up there. But
a fundamental strip for the life of Venice, especially because the venetian life
has developed vertically a lot. This is
present in Canalettos paintings, in
Carpaccios paintings. There is one
painting by Carpaccio, a view of the
Grand Canale, where we see lots of people and several ceremonies happening
at several levels and, at the top, in the
altane at the top of the buildings. This
means that the city of Venice should be
looked at differently and not as an artefact crystallised in time. The morphology also has to be understood from another point of view. The third concept
is the rehabilitation of the Venetian altana. Its the second stratum of the
landscape. When one goes up there, it
has this magnificent richness: common
roofs and Palladian domes.
PCC: Youve already had a very
long and rich professional career.
You have already seen and lived several professional mutations. This
will be one more. Do you think it is
important for architecture to come
to the street?
GB: Architecture should never have
left the street. The street is the city. Culturally, this bridge was always present.
In some cases, it was most striking, as
for example in pop culture, which I
think is extremely important, but I was
never very seduced by it. The problem
with pop culture is that at a certain
time it became enchanted, not to say
fascinated, with the consumer society.
There are other cultural worlds besides
the Pop world. I am sorry my career
cant be longer. We are living in a time
where everything is transforming very
quickly, where the former models are
put into question, but, in turn, its an
extraordinary moment to ask how do
we put ourselves in this world. I believe
this is where the challenge lies. And it
is extremely stimulating. Maybe that is
it - when I say that architecture creates
containers for life to happen and the
city is mainly what we do - our bridge to
life. This bridge is sprouting in a very
violent manner, disorganised, with
misery and contradictions Our world
is our street. When I say our street, I
mean the city we have. Moreover, the
city is no longer the historical city. Today, the city is everything, including the
historical one.
PCC: If you were 30 years old,
would you be an architect?
GB: Do you know what the problem
is? Is that I keep thinking that I am 30
years old (sic).
BIOGRAPHY
Gonalo Byrne is an architect that has witnessed
many historical moments of modernity in Portugal:
the pre-April 25th revolution times, the speculative
80s, the 90s and its public investment and the
current economical crisis. Beyond his unmatched
body of work, he is also a international reference
when it comes to Portuguese architecture, with
works in Italy, Belgium and Switzerland. He is also
one of the great patrons of Portuguese architecture.
Many architects of unquestionable reputation have
worked in his studio: Aires Mateus, Paulo David, Joo
Pedro Falco de Campos, amongst others. Renowned
teacher, he has lectured in Harvard, Mendrisio,
Navarre, Coimbra, Milan and many other schools.
Vacant housing in Portugal
Peopleless
Homes - a
landscape of
opportunities
735 128
Is the total of vacant dwellings in Portugal
12.5%
Linking the large amount of empty homes

with more dynamic renting markets and
housing rehabilitation seems the kind
of strategy the government is putting to
practice.
735,128 vacant dwellings, more 1,860 million of dwellings than families, almost
half of which built in the last decade
From the project "Foreclosures" by Andr Pais (www.andrepais.com)
Zara ferreira & JOANA oliveira

photos Andr Pais
maps Gonalo Loureno
porto
lisboa
In the construction of the Vacant

Houses in Portugal maps QuantumGIS
(QGIS) was used. QGIS, not only allowed
us to analyse the spatial distribution
of vacant property, but also to create
colourful visualizations of data.
All the data used in this study was
sourced from Statistics Portugal
(Instituto Nacional de Estatstica,
INE) and was collected during the last
Census (2011).
Ideally we would have worked with
disaggregated data but, as this data
does not exist or, at least, was not
made public, we ended up working
with statistical data, aggregated in
geographical entities or blocks, the
same that is used to support the
Census campaigns in Portugal.
By combining both layers, statistical
blocks and vacant data, in QGIS, we
were able to create these vacant maps
for 18 counties in Portugal.
GONALO LOURENO
5 859 540
4 043 726
5 019 425
3 650 757
+1.860
1991
2001
Distribution of conventional dwellings according to

the form of occupation
2011
73,5%
70,8%
1991
Conventional Dwellings
Ave
Entre Douro e Vouga
Grande Porto
Grande Lisboa
Regio Autnoma dos
Aores
Tmega
Pennsula de Setbal
Cvado
Regio Autnoma da
Madeira
Baixo Vouga
Lezria do Tejo
Pinhal Litoral
Alentejo Central
Baixo Mondego
Mdio Tejo
Oeste
Do Lafes
Minho-Lima
Baixo Alentejo
Alto Alentejo
Alentejo Litoral
Cova da Beira
Douro
Alto Trs-os-Montes
Pinhal Interior Norte
Beira Interior Sul
Serra da Estrela
Pinhal Interior Sul
Beira Interior Norte
Algarve
Regio Autnoma da Madeira

Algarve
Pennsula de Setbal
Cvado
Oeste
Regio Autnoma dos Aores
Grande Lisboa
Grande Porto
Baixo Vouga
Aveiro
Pinhal Litoral
Tmega
Entre Douro e Vouga
Lezria do Tejo
Minho-Lima
Baixo Mondego
Alentejo Litoral
Do Lafes
Mdio Tejo
Alentejo Central
Cova da Beira
Beira interior Sul
Douro
Baixo Alentejo
Alto Trs-os -Montes
Alto Alentejo
Pinhal Interior Sul
Beira interior Norte
Serra da Estrela
-10%
0%
Change rate of the number of conventional dwellings
40%
Change rate of the number of conventional families
Secondary residence/seasonal use
12,6%
2011
10%
20%
30%
40%
Secondary residence/seasonal use
50%
60%
Empty
70%
80%
90%
Distribution of vacant dwellings according to their

purpose by nuts III
2011
100%
To rent
76%
73%
1-4
4-9
9-15
15-23
23-34
34-50
50-74
74-121
121-298
21%
Variation
123%
20%
7%
3%
Proprietrio
2001
Arrendatrio ou
subarrendatrio
Outra situao
2011
Distribution of conventional dwellings according

to the form of occupation in the EU member states
Last year available
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
To demolish
Others
Secondary residence
Vacant houses
housing: Percentage of new Construction in Portugal
2001
97,5%
80%
2011
0%
Occupied by owner
68,1%
19,3%
12,6%
Of the total accomodation registered:
Habitual residence
7%
Romnia
Estnia
Hungria
Eslovquia
Espanha
Eslovnia
Letnia
Irlanda
Malta
Grcia
Portugal
Unio Europeia (UE-27)
Luxemburgo
Reino Unido
Itlia
Chipre
Blgica
Finlndia
Polnia
Pases Baixos
Frana
ustria
Repblica Checa
Dinamarca
Alemanha
Sucia
0%
To sell
3 500 000
3 000 000
2 500 000
2 000 000
1 500 000
1 000 000
500 000
0
Empty
Cvado
Grande Porto
Pennsula de Setbal
Algarve
Beira Interior Sul
Ave
Entre Douro e Vouga
Minho-Lima
Oeste
Grande Lisboa
Baixo Mondega
Baixo Alentejo
Pinhal Interior Sul
Baixo Vouga
Lezria do Tejo
Alto Alentejo
Do Lafes
Tmega
Mdio Tejo
Cova da Beira
Pinhal Litorial
Alentejo Central
Serra da Estrela
Alto Trs-os-Montes
Alentejo Litorial
Douro
0%
Habitual residence
19,3%
10,8%
2001
Habitual residence
Distribution of conventional dwellings according to the
form of occupation by nuts III
2011
68,1%
18,4%
15,9% 10,5%
2011
Change rate of the number of conventional dwellings

and classic families
2001-2011
number, proportion and variation of classic habitual

residence dwellings by occupation regime
2001-2011
9%
More dwellings than people
1981
Classic families
4 154 975
3 147 403
2 924 443
3 382 884
Number of conventional dwellings and classic families

1970-2011
1970
(Graphic3: Distribution of conventional

dwellings according to the form of
occupation, by nuts III, 2011). Regarding
the vacant accommodation, between 2001 and
2011 there was a registered increase of 35.2%,
well above what was recorded between 1991
and 2001 (23.5%).
In 2011, from a total of 735.128 vacant
dwellings, more than half (58.7%) was in an
expectant situation - not available on the
market - or awaiting for demolition (3.9%).
22.4% were available for sale and 15% for rent.
(Graphic4: Distribution of conventional
dwellings according to the form of
occupation: 2011; Graphic1 5: Distribution
of vacant dwellings according to their
purpose, by nuts III, 2011).
If we consider the dwellings for secondary
residence as vacant since it corresponds to
their state most of the year, 31.9% of the
accommodations in Portugal are generally
empty.
Between 2001 and 2011, the number of vacant
house for sale increased 56.3%, pointing to
the existence of a housing market devoted to
selling instead of renting (73.2% of the classic
housing for habitual residence is occupied by
the owner). (Graphic 6: Number, proportion
and variation of classic habitual residence
dwellings by occupation regime, 20012011). In fact, Portugal is among the countries
of the European Union with the highest
proportion of accommodation occupied by
owners (above the EU average of 70% )
(Graphic 7: Distribution of conventional
dwellings according to the system of
ownership in the Member States of the EU).
0-4
ALL GRAPHICS INFORMATION SOURCE: INE (STATISTICS PORTUGAL) http://www.ine.pt/, CENSOS 1970, 1981, 1991, 2001, 2011 / EUROCONSTRUCT, 74TH CONFERENCE (GRAPHIC 13)
2 702 215
Almost half of
the vacant houses
available for sale was
built in the last decade
About the construction

of these maps:
2 302 980
here are 735,128 vacant

dwellings in Portugal. Almost
half of the ones that are for
sale were built in the last
decade.
Since the 80s, Portugal,
throughout the whole country,
has seen the increase in
number of dwellings become
higher than the growth in
number of families.
According to the last census
conducted in 2011, the number of houses in
Portugal now exceeds by 31% the number of
families: in a country with 4,043,726 families
there are 5,859,540 dwellings, that is, over
1,860 million more homes than families.
(Graphic 1: Number of conventional
dwellings and classic families, 1970-2011;
Graphic 2: Change rate of the number
of conventional dwellings and classic
families, by nuts III, 2001-2011).
The dynamics of the Portuguese housing stock
has been mainly characterized by a constructive
rhythm that is a reflection of the strong growth
which the housing market had in the past
recent decades. This was developed with a
clear focus on the construction of new housing,
causing a strong increase in the number of
vacant dwellings in the whole country.
Of the total accommodation registered in 2011,
68.1% were of habitual residence, 19.3% were
of secondary residence and 12.6% were vacant
Vacant
houses on 18
Portuguese
counties
10%
Rental
20%
30%
Others
40%
50%
60%
80%
70%
90%
100%

aloj_vagos_pt_s_etiquetas 17.pdf
aveiro
09/07/14

18:41
09/07/14
18:48
far0
bragana
vora
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18:43
castelo branco
beja
coimbra
braga
From a total of 735,128

vacant dwellings, more
than an half (58.7%)
was not available in
the market neither
awaiting for demolition
When we look at the occupied house, we quickly
understand that, in a similar way, many of them
are under-occupied. More than half of dwellings
of usual residence (54%) are considered normal
or have an extra division, whereas only 11% are
classed as overcrowded.
While between 2001 and 2011 there was
an increase of 28.2% in the sub-crowded
accommodation (more than 569,764 places), we
also saw a reduced existence of overcrowded
dwellings with three or more divisions required
(0.6%) and of overcrowded accommodation with
two rooms required (2%) (Graphic 8: Evolution
of the habitual residence dwellings by
stocking rate, 1991-2011).
In order to understand this phenomenon it also
should be noted that the average size of the
Portuguese family has gradually been declining,
currently standing for 2.6 persons (3.7 persons
per family in 1970) (Graphic 9: Average size
of classic families). The slowing down of the
demographic growth in Portugal is noteworthy,
accompanied by an increase in the aging of the
population, placing Portugal as the country of the
EU Member States with the highest aging index
(127.8, above the EU average placed at 112.2).
It is also worth mentioning that 75% of the
occupied accommodation is in a state of
disrepair, emphasizing that the problem of
emptiness is not a outcome of obsolescence

(Graphic 10: Distribution of classical
buildings by conservation status). In fact,
almost half of the housing available for sale was
built in the last decade.
This excess of available housing allowed, in the
last 10 years, the number of vacant housing in
the market to exceed the quantitative deficiencies
recorded in all of the portuguese regions (Graphic
11: Variation rate of the number of classic
vacant dwellings, by nuts III, 2001-2011). From
a situation when some regions around the country
once had a clear deficit in the supply of vacant
dwellings, many regions now have a surplus that
almost doubles or triples demand (Graphic 12:
Coverage rate of quantitative housing needs,
by nuts III, 2001-2011).
Despite this scenario, in 2011 Portugal still
showed values in the productivity segment
of rehabilitation below the European average
(26%, with an European average of 34.9%),
with a much higher rate of the construction
of new buildings as the main thread of the
construction sector (40.0%): In2011 the country
saw 31,381 new dwellings be completed, and
this accounted for 80% of the total housing
units built that year. The rehabilitation of
residential buildings accounted for 20% of the
productivity of the construction sector, the
segment with less significance of the national
level (Graphic 13: Distribution of productivity
in the construction sector in EU countries
according to the segment, 2011)
Within a national framework in which there
is an average of 1,45 homes per family and 73%
of the population actually owns its home, the
construction of new housing buildings presents very
low market potential in the coming years, therefore
it is important to analyze the ability of the national
building stock to welcome the development of the
rehabilitation and rental markets.
Distribution of conventional dwellings of usual residence according

to occupation index
1991-2011
8
49%
57%
65%
Is the Average number of

homes per family in portugal
28% 27% 24%

Under-occupied dwelling
23%
Dwelling with neither shortage

nor surplus of rooms
16% 11%
Overcrowded dwellings
3 991 112
More than half of dwellings
of usual residence (54%) is
considered normal or have a
division in excess, whereas
just 11% is overcrowded
Classical buildings
3 551 229
3 055 512
1991
2001
2011
Average Family Size (members)

1970-2011
3,7 3,3 3,1 2,8 2,6

1970
1981
1991
10
Distribution of conventional buildings according to

their state of conservation
1970 -2011
3 544 389
total number of conventional family dwellings
1,45
2001
2011
2%
3%
7%
71%
17%
No repair works needed
In need of moderate repair works
In need of small repair works

In need of major repair works
Extremely run down
73%
11
Of the population owns it's home
Index of the number of vacant conventional

dwellings by nuts III
2001-2011
75%
12
Of the occupied accommodation

are without repair needs
Coverage rate of quantitative housing needs by nuts III

2001-2011
Algarve
Serra da Estrela
Cova da Beira
Alto Alentejo
Beira Interior Sul
Oeste
Grande Porto
Cvado
Ave
Pinhal Interior Sul
Minho-Lima
Alto Trs-os-Montes
Mdio Tejo
Baixo Mondego
Do Lafes
Lezria do Tejo
Tmega
Baixo Alentejo
Entre Douro e Vouga
Pinhal Litoral
Alentejo Central
Grande Lisboa
Pennsula de Setbal
Alentejo Litoral
Douro
Baixo Vouga
Algarve
Cova da Beira
Baixo Mondego
Oeste
Lezria do Tejo
Pinhal Interior Sul
Pinhal Litoral
Baixo Vouga
Do Lafes
Mdio Tejo
Serra da Estrela
Alto Alentejo
Ave
Alentejo Central
Pennsula de Setbal
Grande Porto
Douro
Tmega
Grande Lisboa
Alentejo Litoral
Cvado
Alto Trs-os-Montes
Minho-Lima
Baixo Alentejo
Entre Douro e Vouga
Beira Interior Sul
0%
0%
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
2001
2011
50%
100%
150%
200%
250%
300%
350%
guarda
leiria
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SETBAL
19:07
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portalegre
The rehabilitation of
residential buildings in 2011
represented the segment
with least significance
at the national level
Some signs of regeneration on the
outdated housing structure
Concerned about the drastic numbers revealed in
the last Census (2011), some public authorities
and municipalities have started to realize they
needed to change their housing policies with
strategies that would focused on answering
the new problems of a society submerged in an
economic crisis and with problems of vacancy in
housing and urban centres.
In fact by 2013, 10,9 % of the Portuguese were
facing a severe material deprivation, 2,3% more
than the previous year. Overall in 2009, the
average annual income of portuguese families
was 23,811 and later in 2011, it was calculated
that 29,2% from the total income was spent with
expenses related to housing. Significantly higher
than in the last decade when it was analysed
to be 19,8% by the year 2000. (Graphic 14:
Average annual household spend on COICOP,
2010-2011) For instance housing owners that
used credit had an average of 395 euros montly
outgoings with banks, while portuguese tenants
would spent on average 235 euros on rents,
showing a significant reduction of fixed expenses
for a family.
In that sense linking the large amount of empty
homes spread in the portuguese territory with
more dynamic renting markets and housing
rehabilitation seems the kind of the strategy
the government is putting into practice through
several programs and policies which are made

possible with the creation of partnerships
between public and private institutions.
For instance, Mercado Social de Arrendamento
(Affordable Rent Market) is one measure of the
states Social Emergency Program and started
in 2012. During the last years of the crisis,
banks saw themselves owning a great deal of
housing property due to all the repossessions of
mortgaged buildings . As a response to this the
government invited financial institutions to create
a bank of buildings available for a special
renting market where homes would cost 20% to
30% less than market prices. The municipalities
have used this to channel the homes to lower
middle class families who are stuck in a sort
of wage limbo, earn too much to be allowed a
social house but cant quite afford to rent through
the private renting market. Soon after it started
other public institutions related to rehabilitation
and social security joined the program offering
more buildings to the recently created bank of
properties to rent.
A successful policy that encourages young
people to take hold of their lives and be more
independent is a governments program which
has been rolled out by municipalities called
Porta 65 - Jovem. Students, working-students, or
young professionals at the start of their career,
and are up to 30 years old, can profit from a
public subsidy which translates into a percentage
of the value of their house rent.
In terms of public investment, the government
managed to get a loan of 50 million euros from
the European Investment Bank destined to
fund 50% of housing rehabilitation projects, or
related, that wont be put up for sale, but instead
rented through social programs. Reabilitar para
Arrendar ( Rehabilitate to Rent) candidates can
be the municipalities, municipal companies or
urban regeneration institutions. In the first round
of applications 25 municipalities presented a
total of 78 interventions which will turn into
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19:09
19:00
santarm
hundreds of affordable homes to rent.

Another way the government found to encourage
the private sector to invest in rehabilitation
was to facilitate these projects by giving them
tax benefits and by simplifying regulations and
construction permits. A new by-law dispenses
from compliance, for a period of seven years,
some of the urban rehabilitations regulation for
buildings which are more than 30 years old and
that are mainly used for housing purposes. This
easement of regulations applies mainly to the
requirement to maintain minimum areas, ceiling
heights and the installations of lifts, but still the
government states that this measure can reduce
construction costs from 20 to 40%, making
the process more attractive for investors and
promoting an urban policy capable of answering
the necessities and resources of todays citizens.
Further to this, and on a domestic level, for the
first time ever, this year, tenants will be allowed
to discount 15% (up to a maximum of 500 euros)
of their annual rent payments against their
annual tax returns from 2013.
At the same time there are also liberal
professionals who felt the need to act and have
organized themselves around a common goal: to
identify these vacant spaces and create ways to
occupy them. (Re)habitar Portugal (re-inhabit),
Agulha num Palheiro (Needle in a Haystack) and
Rs-do-Cho (Ground Floor) are examples of
proactive professihat refused to accommodate
with the situation.
By 2013, 10,9 % of
portuguese were facing
a severe material
deprivation, 2,3% more
than the previous year
Vila real
13
Distribution of productivity in the

construction sector in EU countries
according to the segment / 2011
Portugal
26% 40% 34%

Alemanha
Itlia
Dinamarca
Sucia
Blgica
Frana
Irlanda
Espanha
Holanda
Finlndia
Reino Unido
Hungria
Portugal
Repblica Checa
ustria
Eslovquia
Polnia
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Building rehabilitation
Engineering works
Building Construction
14
VISEU
Average annual household spend on COICOP

2010-2011
5 958
2957
2703
2111
1277
1186
1073
864
757
680
441
384
(re)habitar Portugal
Housing, expenses with water, electricity,

gas and other types of fuel
Transportation
Food products and non-alcoholic beverages
Hotels, restaurants, cafs and similar
Other goods and services
Health
Leisure, entertainment and culture
Furniture, decorative items, household appliances
and expenses with household maintenance
Clothing and Shoes
Communications
Education
Alcoholic beverages, tobacco,
narcotics/drugs
Whats your main occupation?

Im an IT professional, currently working for the energy
industry
How did (Re)Habitar Portugal happened?
At first, when I was searching for a place to live,
housing was just a necessity like for anyone else. After
that, when I was taking my degree in GIS, it became a
subject of study. At this point I realized that in Portugal
its very difficult to access official data, in particular,
data held by public institutions. This was when the
initiative (re)habitar portugal came about. We make use
of OpenStreetMap (1), and other available tools, for
creating and editing geo data about vacant buildings
which hopefully can be freely used by others.
From the many ways available to put into practice
what you like doing, youve chosen a very politic
one. Can you tell the reasons behind this?
Its only political because its rooted in the publics
interest to access information.
How does the group work and act?
Well, the group acts like any other group of OSM
contributors, on a voluntary basis. We are anonymous
citizens that either share some kind of concern,
professional or non professional, for matters of territory,
or that enjoying building great detailed maps of the
space that surrounds us.
How can people contribute?
At this stage all contributions are made through OSM,
but in the near future we will be launching a web and
mobile application, tailored to fit our needs, that will
leverage the use of OSM and the tools available for
creating vacant building data. Anyway, to contribute
just start by identifying and locating the vacant
buildings (they show obvious signs of degradation and
abandonment) on your street, then head to the map of
your neighbourhood or city and become an unstoppable
Interview: Gonalo Loureno
mapper. If the building does not exist yet, create the

building first and tag the building as vacant, if the
building already exists just tag it as vacant. The result is
stored internally but OSM does not visually distinguish
vacant from normal buildings. Our web app will do
this on the fly, allowing the user to see the results
immediately.
What will be the next step for (Re)Habitar
Portugal?
In October will be launching the web version of the
app and until then, we will be promoting the initiative
in schools and municipalities in order to expand our
community of sensors and to draw attention to the
housing problem in Portugal.
(1) http://www.openstreetmap.org/
Gonalo Loureno is the founder of (Re)Habitar

Portugal. Following the spirit of Vamos Mapear
Portugal, the main purpose of this initiative is to share
geographic content about the state of degradation and
abandonment of housing in Portugal, in a global map of
free online access. The slogan is simple: Make up your
own street.
The idea came from the shocking numbers: In 2011 one
third of the Portuguese housing was vacant, in 2001 only
34.1% of the vacant house directly served the market.
In Portugal there are like 30 000 families living in slums
and more than half million families living in overcrowded
homes. Does this make any sense? Gonalo believes
that if there was an illustrative map of this reality, things
could change. With OSM anyone can contribute for the
mapping of vacant properties in Portugal. Learn how at:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/
(re)habitar_Portugal
Foreclosures
Andr Pais
andrepais.com
In Portugal, due to the social andeconomic crisis and the austerity measures performed by the
government, more and more families are unable to pay the loans of their homes. According to the
Ministry of Justice, in the first quarter of 2013, 28 families weredeclaring bankruptcy every day.
The increasing number of layoffs, wage freezes and divorces are all reasons contributing to the
disruption of modern families.
During 2012 and 2013 I went to these houses, that are now for sale, to find out what these people
left, and what they took with them.The photographs aspire todocument the interior of some family's
homes that belong to this reality, just as they left them.
These are empty spaces that were once filled with someone's dream. A dream that would prove to
be too farfetched.
Temporary
Temporary
axonometria.pdf
The idea of creating a space for open civic discussions about the city
that builds on domesticity
1
08/07/14
New lexicons of
hospitality
MARIANA PESTANA
LIKE ARCHITECTS
The architectural scheme that supports our research project crosscutting themes such as Porto, Transience
and Housing - proposes to build a temporary home for four architects, inside
the old lobby of a bank, with direct connections to citys main avenue. This is
a project of domestication of a commercial space that intervenes on the institutional and monumental scale of the
place - reinforced by its spatial symmetry and also by the two square base columns, clad with red marble - via a
hinged spatial device built in plasterboard. Such device (re)defines domestic moments, and accentuates their
containment in a building that opens
up to the city and its discussion.
Conceptually, the space is, from the
starting point - the moment where it
touches the avenue and develops in, a
successive gradation of intimacy in which
the social interaction spaces - living, eating, cooking - are directly exposed to passers-by through the large glazed openings, while the more private spaces the
four bedrooms - protect themselves from
onlookers behind a second hidden layer,
facing the pre-existing building and being only visitable to those who enter the
temporary residence.
The awareness of the performative nature of the home results in a multitude

of possible ways to visit it, achievable
through various routes, more or less
maze-like, in which it is possible to be
simultaneously inside and outside of
the home, without ever leaving the
same space. Being a house inside another house (the former bank) designed to be visited and open to people, doors and windows - or, more specifically, their absence - are of particular importance, as moments of relationship between two different spaces.
In this context, two types of voids are
formalized: the ones created by subtractions from the solid wall - drawing
the negative of the traditional doors
and windows - and the ones resulting
from the tension between two opposite walls. While the absence of doors
reinforces the continuity and display
the nature of the ephemeral space, the
empty windows frame the old walls
and the interstitial spaces, increasing
the depth of the new interiors.
Therefore, two kind of spaces are
created: the introverted ones interiors that open to the container trough
small windows - and the extroverted
ones those that frankly open to the
original building through the spacing
between two walls.
The continuous and meandering
wall, freshly painted white, contrasts
with the old, worn down building and
establishes the domestic regulatory

ceilings at 2.40 m height. Thus, to the
existing marble and carpets that materialize the various spaces and floors,
plasterboard was added a paradigmatic building material of the late
twentieth century characterized by
ease of continuous reformulation - that
builds the ephemeral walls, this time
without finishes, in order to allow for
its subsequent re-use.
With a fully equipped kitchen and the
exhaustion ensured directly to the outside, it is only the bathroom - or perhaps
the renowned suites that hinder the
possibility of including this house in a
brochure of the latest real estate development, emphasizing its excellent, exciting location right in the midst of the
city buzz. The lack of toilets in the new
build is justified by the existence of an
operational one in the first floor of the
building, which is accessible only by lift,
as the employers of the bank would have
once done, in the old times.
Being a home without a ceiling, the
light that enters through the windows
during the day washes all the way
through,even to the areas further
apart from the large street windows. At
night, isolated spotlight come down
from the original ceiling comfortably
illuminating each of the spaces. The domestic spotlights reveal this once empty space, and returns it now inhabited
- to the city.
D1
12:00
A temporary
house
Diary of the first 8 days
The project that I am developing with

LIKEarchitects, in the context of the
Official Portuguese Representation for
the Venice Architecture Biennale, reflects upon the transitory. In face of the
radical transformation of the ways of
dwelling (emigrants, consultants, musicians, researchers and students are
only some examples of people who live
in transit) the housing policies and typologies have remained relatively inert,
and perpetuate a system that might no
longer fit the contemporary society.
Through the domestication of a former
bank and its step-by-step conversion
into a house we raise the question, can
the contemporary city, where such
transits flow, offer new lexicons of hospitality that encompass the transitory?
It is from our new address at 66 Avenida
dos Aliados, a building that still maintains the austerity and grandeur of the
banking institution that once occupied
it, that we discuss this question. Besides
our own experience and the relationship that we establish with citizens that
walk in through the doors of our house,
we have invited a group of people from
various fields and backgrounds to discuss it with us. Through a public programme of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and late night meals, we cross perspectives, raise new questions and delineate possible ideas.
We moved in on the Friday 29th of
June after an impulse to become, ourselves, transitory inhabitants of the
city. The transitory condition is present
both in the timeframe of our inhabitation, which comprises four weeks, and
in the character of the building, which
was once a bank and is now derelict until it finds a new function. We live here
in between. Between our former and
future houses and between the buildings former and future use. We are not
squatters. Our residence exists within
a legal and cultural framework from
the moment it constitutes part of the
official representation of Portugal in
the Venice Biennale and it exists within
a programme of artistic residences supported by Portos City Council. The
white walls designed by LIKEarchitects reduce the monumental scale of
the bank and suit the space to our domestic activities, yet their scenographic character accentuates the artificiality of the residence. The vynil stuck on
the windowpane identifies the Biennale framework and recognizes the
project sponsorship in the form of logos, it reveals the artifice and institutionalizes the occupation. This is a wellbehaved squatt. Legal, acknowledged,
agreed. Subsequently, it is not a squatt.
So what is it?
We are not the first architects whose
conscious, staged inhabitation constitutes a cultural project. The French collective EXYZT, for example, is known
for living publicly in their buildings
during and after the construction
works. Not so long ago, in 2006, they
lived in an exhibition context, at the
Venice Biennale. METAvilla was a pro-
ject curated by Patrick Bouchain in

which he invited the collective to inhabit the French pavilion at the Giardini,
constructing a scaffold structure inside
it and living there for the duration of
the Biennale. The aim there was to emphasise the social nature of architecture, to present architecture as occupation rather than a built object, as explained in Spatial Agency, a book edited
by Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till.
With a very different aim and many
years before, the architect Erno Goldfinger lived for two months in his newly
built Balfron Tower, an East London
social housing block. As explained by
Bartlett Architectural Design PhD student David Roberts, Goldfinger referred to his residence as a sociological
experiment and used it to document
and remedy design issues by meeting
residents and asking questions. He
wrote a report for the GLC based on his
experiences and residents feedback,
an empirical exercise which generated
international press coverage and established a strong relationship with residents who made Goldfinger an honorary member of Tenants Association.
The aim here had more of a didactic
and PR nature: to demonstrate the architects faith in the building model and
gather evidence from the tenants of the
tower to feed the design of future buildings, including the Trellick Tower.
The aim of our project is to constitute
a non-scripted platform of discussion,
a place for exchanging ideas. We do not
yet know what the consequences of it
will be. But we know that when we inhabit this former bank we carry with us
the bidonvilles that housed Portuguese
emigrants during the 60s in France,
the 2000 families that occupied a social
block in Lisbon 10 days after the revolution and all the others who followed,
the 6000 Portuguese who would return daily to the country after the colonial war and the 7700 who found home
in Lisbon hotels for an indefinite
amount of time, those who still live in
informal settlements behind housing
blocks in central Porto, and even the
Romanian immigrants who live in a
shop front a few blocks from here, in
Rua do Cames, It is urgent to talk
about the ways in which architecture
responds and defies such realities.
The architect and academic Reinhold
Martin recently wrote a critique to the
2014 Venice Architecture Biennale,
Fundamentals: Absorbing Modernity
1914-2014, in which he mentioned the
original twelve* architectural elements
identified by Rem Koolhaas, the chief
curator of this edition floor, door,
wall, ceiling, toilet, facade, balcony,
window, corridor, hearth, roof, and
stair and the unacceptable absence of
the number thirteen: the land. The land
as real estate, property, territory. The
land as the element without which any
of the others could exist, a territory
contested between property developers, state, owners and occupants. Perhaps our proposal does provide an answer to such absence, in that it is in the
condition of the in-transit inhabitant
without soil, property or territory that
it draws the basis for possible new lexicons of hospitality.
Day 1 Day 3
For the first time, we opened the
doors of our house to the city.
Amongst more than 50 spontaneous
guests, friends and fellow architects,
we proudly sat, in the living room, five
eminent guests at our sofa : (1) the
State Secretary of Culture Jorge Barreto Xavier, who praised the underlying risk and pertinence of the project;
(2) the Culture Alderman Paulo Cunha e Silva who stated the relevance of
the project in face of the current conditions of the city of Porto; (3) the
Housing and Social Action Alderman
Jose Manuel Pizarro who referred to
the traditional maxim "so many empty houses and so many homeless people"; (4) the Urbanism Alderman Manuel Correia Fernandes who talked
about a new kind of citizen which he
called the "passer-by", a growing typology that requires new housing
frameworks; and (5) the chief curator
of the Portuguese Representation in
Venice, Pedro Campos Costa, who
presented Homeland - News From
Portugal, the Portuguese Pavilion.
The informality provided by the domestic setting of the residence put the
guests at ease - even if a little tight
sharing the same sofa - which was interesting and made us think that indeed the setting might create a particular democratic and informal atmosphere between guests with different backgrounds and interests.
Architect Pedro Bandeira kindly offered to visit us and cook us lunch. He

made a simple delicious pasta and over
lunch we talked about housing in Porto and in Brazil, about the Lagarteiro
social housing block and our residence. Bandeira argued that the owners of empty buildings should be made
aware and responsible for the lack of
housing that affects many in the country. He noted the fact that this project D3
is taking place in a former bank, in a
context where banks are not taking
responsibility and they should for
the current economic and social crisis
as well as for the amount of vacant
buildings in the City Centre.
Day 4
Early visit from Ms Maria da Assuno
Pereira Monteiro, who worked in the
bank that once occupied the building
as a cleaner between 2004 and 2011.
She told us that she was really happy D4
with the possibility to enter the space
again and said "it is a shame that the
space is empty, it should be inhabited,
all of it".
Day 2 Day 5
Today we read our project through the
words of others. Some describe it as
an occupation or an open door to the
city, stating that it looks like a performance, not being one while others
label it as an artistic residence. Mostly, the news focus is on the fact that we
will really live here and sleep here, as
well as on the broader issue being discussed: transitory citizens and transitory buildings.
D1
D5
Lunch with Gui Castro Felga, where

she told us about her renowned Worst
Tours, critical guided tours for tourists that show the real Porto with its
many problems, behind the beautiful
historical faades.
Afternoon visit from Mr Joo Carneiro Soares. He knew the project since
its inception and even called the phone
booth in front of our house! We talked
about the available offer for transitory D5
inhabitants of the city, he told us that
in the 60's many people lived in small
scale informal hotels often for months
and even years, in Porto. Another option was the famous "islands", informal settlements built in the interior of
housing blocks that were usually governed by an anonymous person - not
the owner - and rented at very affordable prices. These usually had one toilet to be shared by all the residents of
the "island".
D6
D7
More information at:

www.thinkingtransitory.blogspot.com
D8
Day 6 Day 8
Today we hosted the first open conversation at the house, having received
more than 30 people in our living
room. It lasted for more than three
hours (we are still trying to figure out
if that is a good thing or a bad thing)
and the guests were Ins Moreira,
Anselmo Canha and Jrmy Pajeanc
and Jorge Velhote. Ins started by deconstructing the theme of the conversation derelict buildings arguing
that the former conditions, that such
buildings entailed before the financial
crisis, are not operative any longer. According to her, moving away from the
semantics of real estate (empty, vacant) might bring us closer to the issues at stake. She usually refers to
empty buildings as brown rooms to
reflect their historical baggage, their
accumulation of histories. With
Anselmo we discussed the process of
transformation of a shopping mall
Stop - that was built in the 1980s in
Porto and after being empty for a few
years gradually gave room to music
studios. Anselmo explained that at the
moment there are over 100 bands at
the mall, and they have recently
formed an orchestra, and that helped
them gain cultural significance before
the city authorities. In face of a legal
process with the city council, the
bands formed a strong community
wishing to remain at the shopping
mall. Jrmy is a French artist who has
been living in Porto for 6 years. He
manifested his surprise towards the
lack of value attributed to the 19th century houses that lay empty in the centre of Porto in contrast to the demand
for such types of buildings in Paris.
The conversation concluded that there
are three main landlords in Porto: the
city council, Santa Casa da Misericrdia (catholic church institution) and
the banks. There was a consensus
about the need to implement a lending
policy in the city of Porto, where the
city council would loan vacant buildings on a temporary basis for cultural
activities and potentially housing. The
solution, according to the architect Pedro Jordo who attended the discussion, must inevitably comprise a public
policy for culture and social action.
Day 7
We watched the documentary Detroit: The Bankruptcy of a Dream, directed by Thierry Derouet. We overheard the following comments from
our three guests: from automobile industry to small scale farming. Its globalization, a space for claiming, demanding, which would not be possible
in an organized and functional society.
Its a space of freedom.
We watched the documentary Es.

Col.A da Fontinha, which shows the
occupation of a vacant school in Porto
by an activist group for social and didactic activities that was embraced by
the local community and evicted by
the authorities. After the film, we discussed the theme of occupation with
Jos Soeiro, a sociologist who was also
a leftist candidate for the Mayor of
Porto and Carlos Moreira, a designer
and member of the association Fora
da Porta.
The discussion was rich and lively,
with the themes being approached
from different perspectives. We noted
the need for emergency housing centres in Porto or other models for temporary inhabitation that can offer dignity to residents. It was also mentioned that the city council must make
its inventory of properties available to
the public. There was a big debate
about the value of conflict and about
the paradoxical relationship between
occupying and negotiating with authorities. If occupation serves to determine the terms of negotiation a priori,
there is a moment of dialogue that
should be aimed and honoured by both
parties occupants and authorities.
The discussion then geared towards
the possibility of manipulating legislation to encourage private landlords to
lend their buildings to those in need of
them, the potential incentives for
landlords such as the rehabilitation
of the buildings but also the protection
and increased value offered by occupation, and alternative current models
such as bailment contracts. Jos
Soeiro criticized the Countrys housing policy, which has transformed Portugal into a country of property owners, instead of tenants, and the social
implications of such model. He proposed a system where the city council
would provisionally take buildings
from private owners, refurbish them
and have them rented at low cost for
enough time as to cover the refurbishment expenses, then return it to the
owners. This model would benefit all
parties the city by offering more
housing and the proprietor by refurbishing their property at no cost. We
talked about international models
such as Camelot, an international
property management services provide with a growing network of offices
in Europe (United Kingdom, France,
Belgium, Ireland, France and Germany). Their live-in guardian scheme
provides housing at symbolic rent in
exchange for protection of the properties of their clients. Their website,
which addresses property owners,
reads: Vacant property is an easy target for vandals, squatters and thieves
who present a very real threat to your
investment as well as holding up any
plans you may have for the property.
In response, Camelot offer the pro-active Live-in Guardian solution that
vastly reduces these risks for a fraction
of the cost of traditional security.
While Guardians are in residence, the
property is secured; reducing risk and
eliminating any delay in response to
crime and maintenance issues on site.
Live-in Guardians are not tenants,
they are residing in your vacant property as a security solution and therefore require just 3 weeks notice before
your property can be handed back for
its primary use. The service provides
clients with the peace of mind that the
property is safe, secure and retaining
its value while vacant.
Temporary
(30-06-2014)
(02-07-2014)
(04-07-2014)
(05-07-2014)
(09-07-2014)
Paulo Moreira
I walked past the door and was called
inside...
Rossana Ribeiro
In the centre of Porto we lack houses, a
real estate market directed at families or
groups, larger households than the single
individual or the couple. There are plenty
of studio and one-bedroom apartments for
sale. But what about the rest? Typologies
suited to the needs of other groups. What
is more, let us not forget the issue of real
estate valuation (/m2)...
Julia Rourire
Take heart for what you are doing, its
honourable and a lot of people should
learn from your example!
Jacques ...
A welcoming and super interesting visit. A
beautiful energy that demands to express
itself and develop. Bravo!
Miguel Martim dos Santos

A very interesting initiative. Our city
needs to be discussed. Talked. Thought.
And transformed.
(04-07-2014)
(05-07-2014)
(09-07-2014)
Sara Nunes
I am glad I attended this conversation.
The initiative it departed from is
especially dear to my heart and so it
ended up generating a conversation
about immensely interesting and
relevant matters. I hope the remaining
talks are as pertinent as this one. I will
be showing up.
Renata Nogueira
A very original idea a well-managed
space that conveys simplicity and the
everyday
A. Manuel Miranda
For the originality and the potential of
this initiative, my congratulations and I
wish you all the best.
(05-07-2014)
(09-07-2014)
Maria de Ascenso Pereira

Monteiro (former employee at
Finibanco)
It is a shame its empty, I would like it to
be entirely inhabited. I was very happy
to be able to walk inside it again.
(02-07-2014)
(30-06-2014)
Joo Carneiro Soares

At present, I believe the issue of
temporary housing in Porto is solved by
the amount of hostels, small hotels, by
renting small houses or rooms at very
amenable prices, from the prospective
tenants point of view. At the moment,
its only in the area of aparthotels that
Porto does not have a reasonable offer.
(30-06-2014)
Gui Castro Felga

What would happen if you decided not to
leave this place at the end of the month?
Society
Excerpts taken from the Houses Visitors book

(30-06-2014)
Jorge Velhote
Nice place to stay! A place of departure
towards changing the way we can
generate modifications that will make
the news and become a political, social
and artistic participative model.
(03-07-2014)
G. Pinto
What matters the most is people,
not politics. It is necessary to get
the population involved in their own
problem-solving processes!
(04-07-2014)
Francisca Bartilotti
It is never too much to think about
the city
Ivo Ramos
I felt at home. A very pleasant space.
(05-07-2014)
(04-07-2014)
Hugo Monteiro
Thanks for the late afternoon sharing. I
wish the project every possible success.
(04-07-2014)
Jos Soeiro
The talk and the sharing were a
pleasure. May the projects multiply.
May the city house more sites for
meeting and questioning, such as
this one. And, while we are at it, may
occupations flourish. My best wishes
for the house and its continuation. I
hope to come back.
Henrique P
Homeland, homeless.. Is it possible
to create this connection between
ourselves and others, that is, to give
to those who are without a home the
house that is currently vacant?
News from Portugal? More homeless
than homeland, or rather, Portugalless..
It takes centuries to invent the primitive
The doric column project
Ana Paula Delgado

I salute the initiative, innovation and
most of all the youth of the participants,
a sign of reform and rejuvenation of the
downtown of Porto.
(09-07-2014)
Manuel Correia Fernandes

A great place that makes you think
Its a good thing, the city changes and so
do the people a big hug
(09-07-2014)
06-07-2014)
Enora & Herv, Beerheepens

Thank you very much for organizing
this event. As tourists and for our first
time in Porto and Portugal, we are glad
to have heard about this urban debate
and social time. Good Lunch!!!
Pedro Baganha
Congratulations on the courage to take
a semi-abandoned place in the heart
of the city; even if temporary it is an
interesting wake-up call.
Pedro bandeira
PEDRO BANDEIRA
Architect, researcher and professor

at the Architectural School,
University of Minho
Last year I was invited by the

Madrid based curator Ariadna
Cantis to participate in the Performing City event an associated project of the 2013 Lisbon
Architecture Triennial , supported by the Spanish Ministry
of Culture. Together with Dulcineia Santos we developed a
Wondering about Porto in times of austerity and contrasts
A Tale of Two Cities

The worst Tours
theworsttours.weebly.com
(Promenade Urbanistique larger in

scale (and degree of uncertainty) than
Le Corbusier's Promenade Architecturale, this is a walk through ideas
and proposals that are the city, rethinking power structures and struggles along the way)
Tourism is, for us, a burnt word. To
travel, on the other hand, is to get involved in a place - and not only in its
bright circuits. Those who come to
visit Porto come to discover this town,
not Vienna, or Prague the associa-
tions and the cafs are not replaceable

for franchises. The recessive austerity cuts and the decrease of the available income for most people has led to
the closing of 20 shops a day, in this
region, in the past year and the ones
that open are either 'gourmet' (and
therefore not for the workers still
stuck with a minimum wage of 485
per month) or '1-shops' of products
done in places where work is even less
valued than here. There is now a separation between 'locals' and tourists,
a zoning through the prices of products and services - this is also gentrification, visible in the difference between the area on the official maps
distributed by the City Hall to visitors,

and the remaining city.If city and politics have the same root ( polis) why
not think, from local to global, the results of the politics chosen in the management of what is common? From the
objective of 'a more equal and fair society' to the 'praise of wild neoliberalism' it was a tiny gap of a few decades:
from the right to the place to the right
to profit, from globalization to the undermining of labour rights and value,
from markets to shoppings, from the
islands to gated communities.From
the 70's until today, the problems in
Porto have changed, as did the model
of public response to them. If once we
had an overcrowded historic centre

and lacked housing -and the public authorities chose to redistribute resources through programs like SAAL,
PER or CRUARB- today Porto lacks
people and we have an unbelievable
number of unoccupied houses, stores
and (worst of all) factories and onceproductive-spaces. The economy
turned from production to services,
and now seems to be focusing only on
tourism, masking the emptiness
caused by the exodus of the people of
Porto and not even being used to generate decently paid, non precarious
jobs.The new construction in the suburbs, more profitable due to its larger
scale, flourished until 2008, supported on credit. The state then gave away
its regulatory function towards private construction builders and became the facilitator of their demands.
Now, those companies try to repeat
the suburban pattern of large interventions, on a block scale, in the centre. Result? Pseudo-squares-with-agate over the inevitable underground
car park, in the back of a five star hotel, financed by public money and
with no one to buy the expensive
housing surrounding it. Ugly corruption made concrete - welcome to Cardosas. The new real-estate bubble is
the touristic one.
Pedro bandeira
low budget performance called

The Future is the Beginning
that consisted on carrying a
doric column from the centre of
Lisbon to the hill of Nossa Senhora do Monte. This performance was presented as a tribute to Greek culture, to their
heritage of democracy, in a moment where Greeces national
sovereignty is being questioned
by perverse economical interests. Not such a different story
from what was happening in
Portugal.
More specifically, and closer

to architectural themes, we
also wanted to emphasize with
this performance that the
Greeks have always given importance to citizenship in the
construction of the polis, using
the Agora as a symbolic space
for gathering, participation,
discussion and debating of ideas. Not by chance, the Greeks
invented the public architectural competition, which nowadays is lacking in our public decisions and finance.
In the sixties art performance was seen as a provocative gesture, most of the time
related to
underground or counter-culture movements intended on
questioning the institutionalization of art as an expression of
power and bourgeois mentality.
Architecture only took on performance as an alternative
practice later, but once it happened, it easily became widely
accepted and, apologies for saying so, was mainly institutionalized by architecture biennales and triennials. Well
framed by the context of specialized events, architectural
performance, in its pursuit of
art performance, lost its ability
to provoke the emancipated
spectator (as Jacques Rancir
would say).
I would venture to state that
the success of architectural
performances, these days, is
mainly related with the lack of
architectural jobs and commissions throughout Europe where
everything appears to be perfectly done (and note that we
are writing from Portugal!).
That is to say performance nowadays is more a consequence of
the crisis than a conscious act
of critique. And even the illusions of political or ideological
statements related to some performances (like ours) are soon
submerged by the entropy of
cultural spectacle and superficiality, a result of the lack of
money and time.
It is precisely this lack of time
(that lvaro Sizas always complains about) that pushed
performance to become the
stage for emerging architects,
without clients or means to develop traditional practice. Performance, most of the time with
low costs and few strings attached, democratized architectural production or, at least,
created the illusion of it, embracing, nevertheless, architectural thinking and cultural production. After all everything
is supposed to be architecture.
Under this field of architectural performance, and following some ideologies from the
sixties, a new generation of architects started to intervene on
issues concerning public space,
giving visibility to urban problems or proposing more social
interaction and participation.
Ephemeral actions or precarious architectonic structures
are used to draw attention to
political and social conflicts,
with some naivety they aspire
to solve these problems. But
most of the time they are, itself,
part of the problem.
Young architects provided
with entrepreneurship and
proactivity, see in the performance their opportunity to
show themselves, but most of
Ephemeral
actions or
precarious
architectonic
structures are
used to draw
attention
to political
and social
conflicts?
the time they are not paid for
their actions. The betterment
of ones curriculum or promises
of publication are, most of the
time, the currency paid by the
organizations behind these
events, and for those institutions creativity is related to
do much with almost nothing.
Besides the goodwill of most of
architect performers, this expresses a problem in itself,
which becomes even more of an
issue with an aestheticization
of the ephemeral and precarious within a low cost

culture and spectacle.
Low cost, paradoxically, promotes wide access to services
and goods but, as we know, is
also the expression of a savage
global capitalism that at the
same time corrupts social values and benefits that took so
long to conquer. As Siza would
put it, comfort and quality in
architecture have a cost. Do we
really want to question that,
and downgrade our legitimate
expectations?
Unfortunately, nowadays
performance is not an alternative to anything, but it seems to
be the only response for everything. With the Future is the Beginning performance, we were
quite aware of all these contradictions. The doric column was
proposed as symbol of ethical
values that
we consider perennial and is also a symbol of

aesthetic value which persisted up to postmodernism , thus
revealing a material and immaterial persistence needed to
counter the cultural and social
precariousness in which we live
today.
Maybe its time to reinvent
the primitive.
Reactivate
the Desterro
Hospital
The rehabilitation of the Convent of Desterro, hospital in Lisbon until 2006, will end soon to
host tenants who can inhabit
and work temporarily in a cell
and cultivate gardens.
Source of Mainside, this rehabilitation partner, said that there
has been a great demand for people interested in embracing the
project, with a focus on residents
of the area which demonstrate a
strong interest in collaborating in
the regeneration and revitalization of this city fraction.
The activities that will occupy
the space will seek heritage of
the old convent and the old hospital and revive ideas as: living, working temporarily in a
cell, grow gardens, have lunch in
a large cafeteria and make community sessions of alternative
medicines.
The company indicated that it
is expected a unit of temporary
accommodations like residential work. In the space, will be
also create an experimental
school and an art gallery.
The Mayor of Lisbon stressed
that this is an excellent example of how large spaces that are
empty today-and that in the new
market conditions can hardly be
sold following the initial project
-need not to be closed in decay,
but can be reoccupied, reused
and reinvented. Antnio Costa
believes that this project will
help the all area to draw new
people, new audiences and that
will create jobs.
Alessia Allegri
Informal
Informal
Informal cronology / Ateliermob and Joo Baa

25 April 1974
(During the first

fortnight after the day
of the Revolution)
In Lisbon, 2000 houses
are occupied, for the most
part municipal housing, of
which many are still under
construction.
14 May 1974
A statement by the JSN

(the National Salvation
Junta) legalizes the
occupations that had taken
place, establishing some
conditions.
Demonstration
against the
occupations law,
Arrbida Area, 17
May 1975 Alexandre
Alves Costa collection,
April 25 Documentation
Centre
31 July 1974
3 May 1975
Joint decree by MAI (Ministry IV Government writes the

of Internal Administration)
Housing Policy Programme.
and MESA (Ministry of
Social Infrastructure and
Environment) creates SAAL
(Local Mobile Support
Service)
No caption
Alexandre Alves Costa
collection, April 25
Documentation Centre
17 May 1975
Demonstrations for the right

to housing and the repeal of
the anti-occupation decree
(198A/75) by dwellers of
the more underprivileged
and illegally-started
neighbourhoods in Lisbon
and Porto.
9 July 1975
Demonstration in Lisbon by
the inhabitants of Setbal
to advance the cause of
the 500$00 per room, as a
maximum limit set for house
rents.
Auto-Construction
in SAAL Operation
at Relvinha
neighbourhood,
Coimbra, n.d.
Unknown author,
Collection
of the Semearrelvinhas
Co-Op for Economical
Building and Habitation
14 January 1976
A powerful bomb goes off in

the SAAL/North facilities.
27 October 1976
A joint decree from MAI

(Ministry of Internal
Administration) and MHUC
(Ministry of Housing,
Urbanism and Construction)
extinguishes SAAL (Local
Mobile Support Service) as
No caption
Alexandre Alves
Costa collection,
April 25
Documentation
Centre
Housing policies in Portugal in the 20th century and the dream of the April 25 revolution
The right to have a house
a service of the FFH (Housing

Development Fund). Three
Government Commissioners
are nominated to coordinate
the activities of the Central
Administration in Lisbon,
Porto and the Algarve.
Demonstration in
front of the Porto
Town Hall, n.d.
Alexandre Alves
Costa collection, April
25 Documentation
Centre
Houses, yes!
Shacks, no!
Chorus:
Houses yes! Shacks no!
Houses belong to the people!
Down with exploitation!
ATELIERMOB
Once the monarchy was overthrown, in
1905, one of the first substantial measures
undertaken by the government of the republic towards the reorganization of society addressed housing issues. Until 1919,
the working classes lived in dwellings rented under precarious contracts. Evictions
were easy and recurrent. Published five
weeks after the Republic was established,
the Tenancy Law was passed, making
evictions more difficult and regulating the
rise in rents which had been a thoroughly liberal market until then. The first republican governments there were 45 of
them in 16 years especially those led by
Sidnio Pais, were extremely active in
planning an intervention in the field of
cost-controlled housing. But in 1922, the
government that took office wanted to
break with the policies of its predecessors
and proposed an austerity programme
that abandoned the plan for the construction of new workers neighbourhoods.
Four years later, the country would witness the military coup that led to Salazars
dictatorship.
Initially, Salazar recovered part of the
republican governments plan that saw
the completion, by the start of World War
II, of some previously planned neighbourhoods to which others were later added, in
an ongoing process that only came to a
halt because of the post-war financial
strain and later, with the start of the Colonial War in the 60s. Even though a number of important experiments in the field
of housing were carried out in the 60s and
70s, namely in urban centres, the State
was unable to respond to the pressure of
massive migratory inflows from the countryside to the city. Surrounding the cities
of Lisbon and Porto, sprawling informal
shantytowns grew and housed families
and newcomers, often according to the region where they originally came from.
In Clandestinos em Portugal [Clandestine in Portugal], Carlos Macedo Rodrigues argues that it is in the housing sector that the Portuguese city sets itself
apart from most Western European cities,
since a significant percentage of homes
built from the 60s onwards has taken
place through what could be called the
I left the countryside for the city

A strange land is a curse to bear
Where we die from sunrise to sunset
For a meagre crust
As half the crop goes
Straight to the bosss pocket
I was sick of poverty
Of watching my children weep
I got up and left everything
To come work in the city
Without money or a roof
To the shacks I went to live
Chorus
They say those who are born poor
and without money for schoolin
Must live under a yoke
And must endure
What fortune throws atem
And to the crumbs they can grab
Ill have none of that fortune
That only makes the bosss fortune
Thats the talk of those bent
Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, Art. 65 - Housing valter vinagre
On carrying on exploitation
informal housing sector.
citizens, organized in residents associa- present representation at the Biennale. Ill fight so that my fortune
With the carnation revolution of April tions. Named SAAL (see essay by Joo Though the neighbourhood cannot be Is made by my own hands
25, 1974, the housing problem gained visibility. The demographic growth caused
by the colonial returnees, as well as several large-scale occupations of buildings
and neighbourhoods, some of which still
under construction, increased pressure
on the State to an extent that did not go
unnoticed by the first democratic governments. The first Constitution born
out of the revolution consecrates in Article 65 the universal Right to Housing
(pictured here).
Three months to the day of the revolution, the then Secretary of State Nuno Portas proposes to the government the launch
of a national housing construction programme. This pioneering and innovative
proposal sought to bring together the
State, funding, architects, engineers and
Baa), the programme was as short-lived

as it was revolutionary.
But political engagement was unable to
respond to the needs of a people to whom
freedom had given back the right to
dream of, and demand, a better life.
Alongside demonstrations ringing
with slogans like Houses yes, Shacks
no! or The working mans home cannot
come out of his salary, people would organize their homes and neighbourhoods
informally, in the hope that running water, sanitation, urban planning and the
construction of roads would eventually
catch up.
In fact, this is the context that witnessed
part of the construction of Monte Xisto in
Matosinhos, which is the focus of the intervention carried out in the area, in the
identified with a specific period, a sizeable

part, built post-April 25, was the result of
the fractional division of large portions of
farming land, so that workers could build
their homes on those plots.
If before April 25 a housing problem
already existed, the States action sought
to render it invisible or silent before society. With the revolution, and for the immediate years that followed, it would
have been very difficult to better plan the
impending and inevitable bursting of the
bubble. The feeling of freedom, the feeling that anything would be possible regardless of the economic hardship and,
above all, the absence of fear, lead most
individuals living in appalling conditions
to claim, demand and take it upon themselves to improve their living conditions.
I am a labourer I am a stonemason
I work in construction
Its me who builds the houses
For the bourgeois and for the boss
I give palaces to the fine folk
Whilst I live in a shack
The scum that exploits me
Live high on the hog
Villas in the countryside and the
seaside
For their mistresses and their cats
And all at my expense while
I live in a slum.
Chorus
SAAL - Architecture in times of hope

JOO BAA
The Portuguese revolution of April 25th,
1974 ended 48 years of dictatorship. Between this date and November 25th, 1975
several thousand people organized and
participated intensively in neighbourhood associations and cooperatives.
The SAAL was a project created by a
joint decree of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs and the Ministry of Social
Equipment and Environment, proposed by the Secretary of State for
Housing and Urbanism Nuno Portas,
and approved on July 31st, 1974, three
months after the revolution, during the
1st Provisional Government. This process was the most visible project of
state intervention during the PREC
But weve had enough of poverty,

Things will be different now
Let no man be without a home
While there are houses with
no-one inside
(Ongoing Revolutionary Process), to try being practically extinct, to confer on how they wanted their homes, thus em- For the end of exploitation
to resolve the serious housing needs of Municipalities the control and defini- bodying the mutual learning process. Let us all march on
a large number of families.
The SAAL has linked the notion of
housing rights with the right to the city
and the right to place, defending the permanence of populations in the same
neighbourhoods and opposing forced relocation to the suburbs, and distributing
the responsibility for the management
and control of the technical operations
between the technicians and the local
population. The architects who were part
of the Technical Brigades put their knowledge at the service of the neediest population, who had self-organized in neighbourhood commissions, neighbourhood
associations or housing cooperatives.
Through a legal order issued by the
First Constitutional Government on
October 27th, 1976, the SAAL ended up
tion of ongoing operations, from which

the biggest obstacles to SAAL had previously emerged. At the time this order
was published, were active 169 operations throughout the country, involving
41,665 families of poor residents. 2,259
new houses were under construction
and there was an imminent startup of
over 5,741 (Bandeirinha: 2007).
Mutual learning is an emic concept
that I developed from my research on
the Relvinhas neighbourhood and that
is related to mutual learning among different cultures, different classes and
different acquirements.
The architects had to learn to work
with other scales and communicate differently and the residents had to learn
to participate in assemblies, to explain
The mutual learning which was present

in other government projects carried
out in the same period, sought greater
democratization of knowledge, culture,
health care, such as the Student Civic
Service, the Campaign for Cultural Dinamization and Civic Action of the
Armed Forces Movement and the Medical Service in Periphery.
Considering that the archives of
SAAL are scattered and incomplete, I
believe that oral history could fill some
gaps. Through the study of the memories of those who participated in each
SAAL operation it is possible to perceive this process and some of the different issues that were changing
throughout this short but extremely
dense project/process.
All together and well organized

Well set out to conquer
Well crush forever
Capitalist oppression
Freedom for the People
In a socialist homeland
Chorus
Unknown author
Source: O Futuro Era Agora - O Movimento Popular do 25 de Abril [The Future was Now Popular
Movements of April 25], Coord. Francisco Martins
Rodrigues, Edies Dinossauro, Lisbon, 1994.
The slope of Monte Xisto, showing the site of intervention (center, left) valter vinagre
Designing from the

centre: up-and-down
Architecture as a technical and social-political praxis
PAULO MOREIRA
photos VALTER VINAGRE
Current architectural practice defines
itself between two apparently antagonistic modes of reading the informal
city. On one side, the economy-driven
paradigm of urban development,
which fails to grasp the latent urbanity
of the non-planned. On the opposing
side, the rather unstructured and intuitive attempts of NGOs and sociallyengaged urban planners to cope with
the logics of informality.
A growing number of critics consider
conventional top-down planning as 'futile'. At the same time, bottom-up practice is widely considered a positive, inclusive approach. In-between these two
extremes seemingly there is only a grey
zone as if architects either work on the
dark side (for developers and politicians)
or on the bright side (with 'the people').
Successful collaborative city-making
is a far more complex issue. As a matter
of fact, if reduced to a feeling of nostalgia or pity, bottom-up approaches may
become simply a patronising gesture of
kindness from well-educated professionals in favour of desperately poor
citizens. Paradoxically, well-intended

actions perpetuate urban precariousness and even absolve authorities from
any responsibilities in providing better
living conditions.
What if architecture reconciled topdown strategies with the political correctness that arises from the ground?
The profession is in a privileged position to pursue this intention, because
architects can speak the specialist language of decision-makers and, simultaneously, they can engage with the
struggle of the disenfranchised.
Designing in informal
neighbourhoods
There cannot be any universal formula
for designing in informal neighbourhoods. There are no 'exemplary' methods, no unique strategy that can be deployed wherever there are poor people,
lack of basic infrastructure and hazardous houses. Above all, working within
any given urban context implies getting
to know the territory and the people involved (both residents and officials).
Across the globe, some inspiring projects have been pointing in this direction. Examples of comparatively modest yet meaningful interventions in-
clude NLs floating school in Makoko

Village, Lagos (which uses local labour
and resources as an act of resistance);
Julia Kings 'invisible' sanitation projects in Savda Ghevra, Delhi (which
are the vehicle of civic awareness,
eventually leading to the creation of
neighbourhood associations with a legal status); and the work of Teddy Cruz
around the history of San Diego and
Tijuanas border (where the vicissitudes of those particular places constantly evolve into design projects that
tie together top-down and bottom-up
tactics). In Portugal, the Casa do Vapor, designed, built and managed by a
multifaceted team in a fisherman village South from Lisbon, raised the
standards of architecture with a social
purpose. Despite being a temporary
project, its legacy will certainly remain for a long time.
When addressing informal neighbourhoods, architects should position
themselves in the middle, moving constantly up-and-down between the
higher spheres of power and the 'dirty'
ground of reality. Ultimately, these
complex, sometimes dyslexic processes are more likely to contribute to
transforming a love-hate relationship
into a credible praxis.
paulo moreira
unbuilt-it-yourself
Less than half of Monte Xistos
houses are licensed or under
co-ownership shares schemes,
despite some of them being built
on a former municipal waste dump.
The other half are illegal, or their
licence proceedings are pending.
The sites legal status ranges from
unsusceptible of urban conversion
to indefinite areas. In regards to
the former, demolition seems to be
unavoidable. Such was the case of
a group of six houses razed to the
ground by the city hall in late 2013,
following years of negotiations. The
latter cases are indeterminately
on hold, drowning in endless
bureaucracy such as land title
registries updates.
Such is the case of an area of
Monte Xisto, in Matosinhos, where
some houses built on a slope are
in danger. The city hall is aware of
the problem, and a couple of plans
have been started (but none of

which has so far gone any further).
The idea of this proposed project
is to transform the debris of some
annexes and house extensions
overloading the slope into the raw
materials for building gabion walls
and a public place. The project
reconciles the tendency to resort to
demolition with the peoples right
to remain. It is a participatory, less
expensive solution to this indefinite
area of Monte Xisto.
These demolitions were agreed
with both residents and officials as
part of an exchange that, so far it
seems, leaves all sides satisfied:
the residents can keep their main
houses, and the city hall solves
a long-lasting problem with a
relatively modest investment (whilst
gaining a new public place). This
compromise solution unlocks what
was otherwise a dead-end situation.
Informal
Economy
Giving the floor

to
local
residents
From all our friends, we are one of the
Joo Quinto
Head of the Urban Planning Division
Illegal urban
areas in
Matosinhos
- Processing
few who have a house with a courtyard
ATELIERMOB &
paulo moreira
Jlios family moved to Monte Xisto before the revolution of April 25, 1974.
Within their means, and relying on a
support network that allowed them to
pay for building materials when they
could and to get assistance with the construction when they needed, they went
on to build, one house at a time, one for
each of the siblings, the entire street
where they all now live. At the same
time, they helped build other neighbouring houses in total, Jlio believes
he helped build around fifteen houses.
Paying the fine for illegal construction
was an integral, and accepted, part of
the process.
Jlio works for the Municipality of
Matosinhos as a driver, but he moonlights in Monte Xisto doing construction
work, together with his brothers. The
enforcement of certain legal requirements towards the neighbourhoods legalization guarantees Jlio some extra
income. At present, the most common
work they undertake is the connecting
of homes to the public sewage system,
since according to the Municipal Services, and enforced by a fine, it is mandatory for houses still fitted with independent septic tanks to be connected to
the mains sewage system.
Raquel and Fernando also received a
letter from the water company ordering them to carry out sanitation works.
At the suggestion of a neighbour one
of Fernandos clients Jlio and his
brother were called in.
The couple bought their house in
Monte Xisto in 2010. Right after they got
married, they lived with Fernandos parents and the following year, they started
looking for a house to buy. They lived
close to the airport for 7 years. At the
time, they both worked in a hairdresser
salon in Matosinhos, and they started
looking for a house with extra space for
their pets, something which they tell us
is very dear to their hearts. The search

wasnt easy, as prices were high.
They heard of the house in Monte Xisto. They knew the owner and when they
came to see the house their expectations
were very low, because of the asking
price and the neighbourhoods bad reputation. The houses legalization, for
which they had to wait nine months, was
not a demand of theirs but of the bank
that they had turned to for a mortgage.
Although they have no complaints of
cracks or other pathologies arising
from possible structural or construction weaknesses which Jlio in his
expertise admits are common in the
area since moving to their home they
have carried out several improvement
works to better the thermal performance of the house, as well as improve
its overall aesthetics. The works from
carpentry to painting to metal works
were all done by professionals who, like
Jlio, are also from the neighbourhood.
So that Fernando can welcome a few
extra customers in the evenings and on
his days off, they set up a space, with its
own independent entrance, as an informal hair salon. They tell us that the extra income this generates allows them
to carry out the improvement works to
the house, which otherwise with their
salaries alone would not be possible.
Fernando proudly describes these customers, he receives at his home, as:
Lawyers, Doctors, Judges, Employees
of the Municipality, all of them people with University Degrees who even
in the midst of all the rubble, when
the construction works were underway,
didnt stop coming to him.
Raquel and Fernando claim to be the
only ones, in the neighbourhood, to have
bought a house without having a former
family connection to it, but they would
like to see it happen more often. The only
problem for those wanting to invest in the
area is, they explain, that most houses
are illegal. But they are unanimous in
praising the neighbourhood and the
house: Of all our friends, we are one of
the few to have a house with a courtyard.
valter vinagre
RESIDENTS BIOGRAPHY
Jlio Martinho
(Montalegre, 1954)
Jlio has lived in Monte Xisto since
1973. Before then, he lived with
his parents and his five siblings in
Matosinhos, to where they relocated
in the search for work, which was
non-existing in their native Pvoa de
Lanhoso. They started off by working
in farming and later in the factories.
Gradually, they began buying plots
of land along one of the roads of
Monte Xisto, to build the houses they
currently live in. Jlio lives with his
wife and son in the house he built.
He is a driver for the Municipality of
Matosinhos and in Monte Xisto he
does construction work on weekends,
days off and holidays. (TOp)
Raquel Pinto (Porto, 1981) and

Fernando Pinto (Matosinhos, 1973)
Raquel and Fernando bought their
house in Monte Xisto in 2010 and
have been living there ever since
with their two children. Right after
they got married, they lived with
Fernandos parents in Santa Cruz do
Bispo, and after a year, they moved to
Freixieiro, close to the airport, where
they lived for 7 years.
Contrary to most of their neighbours,
they did not have any emotional or
family ties to Monte Xisto, they were
just in need of a house with extra
space for their pets Raquel works in a
nail and beauty salon in MatosinhosSul, and Fernando is a barber and
works in Foz, Porto.(BOTTOM)
valter vinagre
Informal Portugal /ateliermob
ateliermob
Bela, neighbourhood dweller
365 ilegal
is now
legal
Matosinhos city hall
google earth
Google Earth
Portugal novo, lisbon
bairro do talude militar, loures
Quinta da parvoce, setbal
bairro da Jamaica, seixal
Built as part of the SAAL programme, the

Portugal Novo Neighbourhood (Manuel
Vicente, 1977) resulted in the construction
of 384 dwellings.
The buildings came under the authority of a
government institute (IHRU) after the co-op
became insolvent. The government claims
a debt that local inhabitants will never be
able to pay to justify its inaction towards the
buildings upkeep and maintenance.
Dwellings are gradually occupied by a
gipsy community that established itself
there, with only a small number of the
original members of the cooperative
remaining. Buildings are rundown, and the
interior spaces have been informally
adapted giving rise to serious structural
challenges, there is no garbage collection
in this neighbourhood and public space is
not cared for.
For the most part home to citizens of

Cape-Verdean origin, this urban area in
the periphery of Lisbon is considered
unlikely to be reconverted. After years of
tacitly authorized illegal occupation, the
revision of the Urban Design Plan led to
expectations of building among the lands
owners. Meanwhile, residents that are
being rehoused in council estates regret
the breakup of existing neighbourhood
and community dynamics. Those who
stay behind fear that speculative greed
will prevail over their right to housing.
Recently, significant political change
in local government has raised fresh
expectations that the neighbourhood
dynamics will be taken into consideration
in the sites urban development.
The property of the same government

institute that oversees the Portugal
Novo neighbourhood (IHRU), it is located
near Estrada da Graa and has been
home to about 200 people, for nearly
20 years. The neighbourhood has been
in the public eye due to an old dispute
with the electricity distribution company
(EDP), as the illegal connections that
power local homes are frequently cut and
re-established - a situation which, with
the privatization of the main electricity
distribution company, spread to several
neighbourhoods in the country. Without
running water and precarious electricity
connections (the local inhabitants cannot
sign proper contracts as their houses are
illegal) the escalating unemployment
rate has worsened the overall hardship.
Some decades ago, in Fogueteiro, the

insolvency of a construction company
halted a buildings construction works,
leaving it with nothing but the structure
and a court case. In the meantime,
the structure was gradually occupied
by homeless families and closed off
with the bricks that have become the
neighbourhoods trademark. The water
supply is provided by the municipality and
electricity comes from illegal connections
made over 20 years ago. Open sewage
runs through the neighbourhood.
In 2009, a Detailed Zoning Plan was
approved that included the demolition
of the neighbourhood and subsequent
rehousing by 2013, which has not
happened.
urgent intervention
Informality and the

South
ities have an implicit idea of

order, and the informal settlements that grow beyond the
rules of the public authorities
are a chaotic territorial phenomenon. It reflects a population with basic needs, searching for resources, and leads to
social stigmatization.
Urban wise, migration processes are
characterized by breaking with the established city: new urban areas grow
fast, spreading through the territory,
in a contrasting formal urban outcome.
From informal to formal
Ever since its beginning, 30 years ago,
Matosinhos Municipality has been dedicated to the rehabilitation of its informal settlements. In 1989/90 we started
practices harshly criticized by ministerial authorities, but later adopted into
law, like licensing tolerance, an informal administration process; providing
infrastructure to the greater part of the
informal areas and asking for a contribution later. Around 2001, an administrative court order limited the municipals financial support to the populations, the quest for legalization fell to
almost no activity. For the revision and
update of this Law in 2003, Matosinhos
Urban Services actively intervened in
parliamentary working groups, and
thus were able to financially support
the informal communities once again.
From 2005 and onwards, Municipal
services have proactively met people in
illegal urban areas, explaining the
reconversion law. The process is supported in complicity between Mayor
Guilherme Pinto and the urban services, in a kind of a good cop / bad cop
strategy, with the urban services negotiating all of the process, and culminating in a public licensing ceremony conducted by the Mayor.
The key is inclusion. The law that
rules the conversion processes is complex, and to put it into practice was a
communal task: both citizens with experience, lawyers, social workers, architects and the municipal services
themselves shared experiences and
built a trusted knowledge network that
overcame the major obstacles.
The thing to acknowledge, is that this
population have by law a form of capacitation that empowers them: where the
land belongs to multiple persons, in a
common ownership regime, an executive committee is established to realize
the councils orientations; a fiscal committee is set up to watch over the formers activities; and the Councils minutes of the decisions taken by this
closed community is an executive title,
meaning a court will summarily execute the peoples collective decision in
a very short time, forcing the minorities
to accept the majorities decisions. This
constitutes a bottom up decision process that allows them to reconvert and
legalize their situation with institutional backing; the law is an inclusive one,
and Matosinhos is on the edge of that
spirit, by having legalized 90% of its illegal urban areas.
Formal outcome
The very same people that brought chaos to a territory, creating informal urban places, finally get the stability that
only order allows. After all, they just
want a place to live their lives, and pass
this on to their descendants. The informal gives way to the formal, and the
process shows us human condition
through urban change to often a missing dimension in todays urbanism and
architectural disciplines, questioning
its roles in contemporaneity.
Espaos Liminares Urban Intervention, Bairro Alto, 2010
Pedro Costa
Planning the
informal city today?
Informality is a key issue in socioeconomic and urban structuring these days
Leading with informality brings

some specificities and particular
difficulties when we are dealing
with Southern realities (Southern Europe, as well as the Global
South), where cultural and institutional particularities undermine much more easily the informality in planning processes. In
cultures where institutional structures allow dubious relations between informality and power, and
where a link in the chain of administration has conditions to exercise its influence and power, and
to gain advantages of it, informality in planning is particularly difficult to manage. Solutions like
temporary uses, for instance, became difficult to implement (easily becoming permanent, without
an efficient judicial system, stable
regulatory frameworks or an accurate civic consciousness). So, in
order to manage the informality
that can be the key for value creation, competitiveness and vitality
in contemporary cities, we need
governance solutions which rely
on responsible citizens and promote effective accountability.
And now? how to plan
informality?
PEDRO COSTA
Economist, researcher at
DINAMIA'CET-IUL and professor at
ISCTE-IUL
Sorry! The lifestyle you ordered is currently out of stock

Banksy
Informality was essential in the
development and structuring of
many urban areas, despite the
extension of planning practices
and of modernist approaches to
cities development. In effect,
throughout the world, informality coexisted with urban expansion and it was an essential piece
in urban growth mechanisms. In
contemporary post-modernist
cities it still plays a key role in
mechanisms of economic and social vitality and brings new challenges to the development of cities. What sense does it make today to plan the informality of cities? What should we do with the
informal settlements that are
part of our contemporary cities?
Should we incorporate them in a
citys mainstream narrative, or
should we enhance their particularities? And, how can we deal
with the informal dynamics that
are essential to structure economic and social (re-)vitalization
of many areas? Should we formalize and institutionalize
them? Or on the contrary should
we informalize the planning of
urban spaces? Not having here
the purpose of exhausting this
extensive discussion, we suggest
4 perspectives that allow us to
deepen the debate of informality
in the contemporary city, in the
logic of urban planning.
Informal cities, informal
economies, informal
societies
In a world marked by globalization processes and deep socioeconomic restructuring, the value
of informality seems to be central and increasingly important
in the structuring of urban processes, as these reflect the own

organization of life, society and
economies. In effect, informal aspects of daily life and of economic organization become increasingly important, and can be explored even as competitive advantages within contemporary
global mechanisms of production and consumption. After modernitys full-scale production
and mass consumption, with
flexible specialization and postfordist approaches to production
and consumption processes, and
with project oriented work organization, the arena for the informal expands considerably. We
are not talking anymore of informal cities just as informal settlements or informal living conditions, but we have to consider the
role of informal economy, informal social relations or informal
lifestyles in the shaping of cities.
Not just anymore in 3rd world
primatial cities but more and
more in consolidated developed urban areas, facing the
challenges of economic reconversion, the informal city affirms
itself in a society and an economy
which increasingly demand
space for informal mechanisms
and dynamics in their functioning. So more integrated approaches to city, understanding
trans-disciplinarily the urban
realm are required in planning.
Informal city and
planning
The unplanned and many times
more organic city is one of the
more visible facets of informality
in urban areas. Are we talking
about slums, suburban areas of
illegal genesis (Portuguese AUGIS), or long term in situ urbanization processes, among other
situations, these are urban settlements marked by informality,
which bring complex challenges
to planning practices. This organic city may be unplanned at its
origins, but it works and it has its
complex social and economic dynamics. And in a certain extent

this is a utopian city, which expresses the multiplicity and diversity of individual utopias (or at
least, possible utopias) of each
family who brought their dreams
to life in those houses. And this
requires an essential preoccupation when dealing with these areas and planning their formalization: we are intervening for
people, and then we have to intervene with the people. Effective
participation and real involvement of population in these processes is thus fundamental. The
right to the city makes the city of
the possible.
symbolic mainstreaming and

gentrification, they play a central
role on urban restructuring and
promotion of vitality. Interesting
planning initiatives, enhancing
the flexibility of norms and
regulation for those purposes, or
assuming temporary intermediate uses, have been explored.
Regardless of the problems that
this can bring in terms of equity
(requiring the permanent management of real estate value creation, gentrification and urban
conflict) we cannot plan city today without thinking on managing flexibility and non-institutionalization.
Summing up, new challenges to

urban planning arise: dealing
with informality in cities requires
more integrated approaches to
the urban realm, citizens involvement and participation, the permanent management of flexibility and of the different rights to the
city; as well as accurate and accountable governance processes.
We need to think and understand the informal dynamics
found in each urban area, as well
as its relation with the city, before promoting interventions
which most times are fated to destroy those same dynamics, that
are vital to the economic and social vitality of those spaces.
Informal city and

creativity
Informality in urban life is also
essential for its role in creative
dynamics and vitalization processes. Urban creativity was always based on transgression and
exploration of the alternative, as
well as on liminality processes.
Most of these processes develop
on the edge of formality and on
the challenging of conventions
and institutionalized solutions.
This is also translated on cityscapes, with the appropriation of
public space for political and social intervention, for artistic interventions, or for gatekeeping
processes and for the mechanisms of conviviality and sociability, which are essential to creative dynamics. Graffiti, street art
or other urban interventions
have brought us many examples
of these in recent years. These
processes naturally bring important conflicts of uses between
city users, both in material and
symbolic arenas. These conflicts
of interest, expressed in public
and private spaces, are often associated to strong gentrification
processes. Non-formal, non-sanitized spaces are particularly attractive to the development of
creative dynamics. Though
many times rapidly affected by
The former mayor of Oporto,

who was in power for the past 12
years, has conducted, since
2009, what he has called an Anti-Graffiti Brigade in order to
discourage its illicit practice,
keep the city clean and fight the
feeling of insecurity in the city.
Most writers and graffiters reacted against this measure saying that, although they understand urban art as ephemeral
there are other ways of dealing
with the subject. They argued
that a selection of graffitis to-beremoved should be made. And
suggested the creation of authorised places to paint, like it already
happens in Lisbon with Galeria
de Arte Urbana - GAU, supported by Lisbons City Council.
Instead, in 2012, the Opos
City Council decided to forbid
and fine graffiters, people who
post posters in buildings visible
from the public space and owners who do not clean their walls
from the so-called plague.
In May 2013 this Brigade
erased a graffiti from the international recognised writer Hazul Luzah.
His paintings are already considered part of Opos identity.
This attitude aroused controversy and brought back the discussion surrounding AntiGraffiti Brigade, with a budget
of 150.000 euros,ready to increased.
The author of the graffiti now
gone advocates he paints only in
buildings in decay and abandoned.
He agrees with the elimination of visual garbage but asks
for the opportunity to those who
want to embellish and colour the
city. It makes no sense to erase
paintings done in abandoned
places unless it is to recover the
building., said Hazul.
After this episode another one
took place in Bairro da Boua,
a neighbourhood by the Pritzker
Winner lvaro Siza Vieira. The
project includes a huge wall in
exposed concrete that has one
side facing the metro station.
This side was covered with graffitis until the day a military
group was deployed to paint it
grey - concrete grey as it was
ironically nicknamed - instead
of being washed with a water
pressure machine.
By the end of the former mayors mandate he created a 40 euros fine to license graffiti and
tries to redeem himself by reaching an agreement with some
writers giving 124m2 of wall to
be painted with historical images
of the city, using the technique of
graffiti. It was supposed to be
part of a project that wants to
preserve the historical and collective memory of the city.
This was the moment when
365 illegal became legal inPorto.
Joana Coutinho
Former Mayor's Anti-Graffiti

Brigade hazul
Possible Personal Utopia, Sarilhos Grandes, 2014 Pedro Costa
Collective
The spectre of a renewed

Eurozone crisis reared its head
yesterday, hitting shares and bond
markets, as fears deepened over the
future of Portugals biggest listed
bank, Espirito Santo. Portugal is barely
out of its bailout programme, and
investors had hoped the finance sectors
problems were over but new woes
have emerged, routing other banking
stocks. The event has hit European
financials like a torpedo and has revived
investors darkest nightmares, said Saxo
Banks Peter Garnry.
Portugal banking crisis rocks

markets as Espirito Santo share price
plummets, CITY A.M. 11 jul 2014
2013 was the worst year ever

for real estate funds. Surprisingly, the
average yield was negative, and there
are no signs of improvement. In 5 years,
the total value of unoccupied properties
[in Portuguese funds] increased from
463 million euros to 886 million euros,
which is just about a quarter of its net
asset value.
Real estate funds: worst year ever proteste investe, 25 feb 2014
Crises stemming from an

overaccumulation in property-led growth
tend to be more long-lasting than the
short sharp crises that occasionally
rock stock markets and banking
directly; often resulting in an oversupply
of commodities such as empty or
unfinished architectural units. We should
look closely at the landscapes produced
by property-led growth strategies as
sites of education and alterity.
Beyond the ghost town opendemocracy.net, 9 apr 2013
17:32
12:08
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all this is not exactly breaking news.

In the late sixties, in the issues of Contropiano, Massimo Cacciari, Manfredo Tafuri and their colleagues at the
Venice School frequently pointed out
that the whole course of Modern
Architecture could not be understood
independently from the processes of
Capital. Following the lead of postmodern thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Edmund Husserl and the work
of neo-Marxist social theorists from
the Frankfurt School, Tafuris wide
spectrum analyses transgressed disciplinary specializations and combined
politics, aesthetics, political economy
and architecture into one analytical
endeavour, entitled Project of Crisis.
For Tafuri, Crisis is criticisms point of
departure and, most importantly, it
on the necessary withdrawal of architecture from capitalist practices, into a

detached and autonomous domain,
neutralizing the possibility of negotiation. But even an architectural project
that tries to counter the proliferation
of profit-based developments ends up
becoming part of the neo-liberal system they wish to repeal, when everything is taken into consideration. Moreover, there is no overstating the importance of private and public capital in
the building of crucial infrastructures
that steer society forward. Capitalism
is the only game in town and progress,
now more than ever, is anchored in financial institutions and complex credit mechanisms, so surely if architecture
is to play an operative role in mainstream urban transformations, it must
sustain some level of arrangement with
the market-driven forces, even if it
wants to act against them: Change is
only possible from the within. On the
other hand, it is very difficult to see how
contemporary democratic societies
such as the Portuguese can function
when the government is more dependent on the pronouncements of the IMF
than of the will of its own people. But it
is precisely in this irrational but inexorable paradox that lies the reason why
architecture is failing to serve the collective: Todays architecture is directed
towards an idea of democratic society
that no longer exists. Consequently, the
real problem is not Capitalism, but the
acceptance of the contemporary Democratic illusion, and this is what should
be at the core of todays architectural
debate.
This is the propositional and provisional framework of Summoning the
Collective initiative. And although it is
addressing a precise and specific urban
problem: the unfinished buildings
owned by real-estate funds that populate urban areas, it is actually proposing to disturb the role of the architect,
to transgress the path of disciplinary
expertise, to expand the possibilities of
architectural action, advocating for an
explicitly pragmatic and ruthless use of
its power. Ultimately, this initiative
aims to be a contribution for the clarification of the vague crossroads between the processes of irreversible globalization and unstable spatial and material organizations in the era of abstract financial instruments.
The bond between architecture and money has proved to be

as much productive as volatile. How can we frame the balance
of the productive relations between the built environment and
global capital in a democratic arena undermined by the effects
of systemic crisis? Illustration: Vasco Mouro
constitutes the immanent structure of

History, allowing it to bring into question the legitimacy of the capitalist division of labour. Today, such an incisive project retains its pertinence, especially considering the contemporary socio-economic demise, and authors such as Pier Vittorio Aureli have
revisited Tafuris work while looking
for critical insights on the way for con-
temporary architecture to go forward.

But if Tafuris neo-Marxist critique
acknowledged the need to keep open
dialogues, working towards the dissolution of borders, regarding the prevalent forces of urban production, and demanded a constant demystification of
ideas in order to move away from utopian perspectives, on the other hand,
todays left-wing critical rhetoric insists
BARE ARCHITECTURE
A strategy that focuses on means rather than ends and favours an openness toward materials and processes
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Euro-Zone Fiscal Colonialism - New

york times, 21 apr 2014
The primary cause of the crisis

was the reckless lending of German and
French banks (both directly and through
local banks) to Spanish and Irish
homeowners, Portuguese consumers
and the Greek government. But by
insisting that Greek, Irish, Portuguese
and Spanish taxpayers pay in full for
those banks mistakes, Chancellor
Angela Merkels government and
its handmaidens in Brussels have
systematically privileged the interests
of German and French banks over those
of euro zone citizens.
Today's architecture
is directed
towards an idea of
democratic society
that no longer exists.
Consequently, the
real problem is not
Capitalism, but
the acceptance of
the contemporary
Democratic illusion
Jean-Claude Juncker tweet,

20 may 2014
Looking back at the past century,

probably one of the most problematic
and less theorized dimensions of
architecture is the ever-increasing entanglement between the development
of urban substance and the processes
of the economic system. As David Harvey explains, this occurs for a wellknown reason: the expansion and interconnectivity of urbanization is precisely what allows the control and organization of labour and revenues. But
12:11
People are just as important to

me as goods and capital. So if they can
move freely, so must people be able to!
#wahlarena #withJuncker
MIGUEL EUFRSIA
25/06/14
The eurozone crisis has tipped

many into disillusionment,
despair and extremism - we need a
European Spring - the independent,
27 apr 2014
Change from the within
Hope of a better future a belief

that progress is possible is fading. The
project that binds Europeans together
the European Union has never
been more unpopular; Britons may
even vote to leave.The EUs crowning
achievement, the euro, is increasingly
perceived as a sadomasochistic
straitjacket. Understandable anger
at the flagrant injustice of bailouts
for rich bankers and budget cuts for
poor schoolchildren overlaps with a
despicable scapegoating of outsiders,
in particular immigrants. Many people
no longer trust mainstream politicians,
EU technocrats and elites in general.
Worst of all, many are losing faith in
democracy itself.
Navigating the crossroads of the built environment and global capital
Crisis Quotes
Collective
The first offspring of the Summoning the Collective initiative gathers consensus
Self-enabling architecture
MIGUEL EUFRSIA
In the last decade, and according to INE,
Portugal has suffered a 68% decrease in
the number of house building permits, a
75% drop in house building (24% drop in
2013 alone) and a 55% decline in house
sales volume. These figures speak for the
predicaments regarding the construction, real estate and architectural professions. Nevertheless, Portugal today has
1.8 million more houses than families,
which corresponds to 45% excess in
dwellings, and these figures do not take
into consideration the number of unfin-
ished buildings abandoned in the aftermath of the burst of the real estate market bubble. To say today that in the domain of Architecture things will not be
the same as before is an understatement:
changes brought on by Crisis to the urban
domain are of such a magnitude that we
can speak of a change of paradigm. This
is why the on-going Summoning the Collective initiative (a collaboration between ADOC architects and Miguel Eufrasia) can be one example to follow.
At the moment, it is a sealed and empty
massive concrete ruin, useless and with
no future. But all this is about to change.
ADOC architects have persuaded the
owner and developer (a joint-venture between Obriverca construction and a real-
estate fund) of the economic viability of

the architectural proposal. The city
council are also on board, happy to bring
closure to an enduring urban problem.
It can be dubbed self-enabling architecture: The emphasis of the project is on
rooting the design itself on the constituting of the pre-conditions that enable the
whole enterprise. Therefore, architecture emerges as the specific and controlled process of mutation, one that
translates into matter and spatial uses,
the debated concerns from the financial,
marketing, legal and social arenas.
The architectural project is composed
of three layers: the underground parking,
the ground floor pedestal (that occupies
almost the full extent of the block) dedi-
cated to commercial spaces and social

organizations, on top of which are the
housing units. They are assembled
around a central courtyard/garden, a
semi-public space that catalyzes social
interaction and provides direct access to
the housing units. The adaptation of a
structure which was originally built for
office and commercial purposes, is a balanced trade-off between minimizing demolition, to ensure adequate ventilation
and sun exposure of the housing units,
and the addition of volume, in order to
meet the expected investment return,
thereby making the built mass more permeable, while maintaining an adequate
low rise scale.
Despite targeting a small quota of con-
temporary urban problems, the Summoning the Collective initiative aims to

be a portal to a larger discussion concerning the relation between the contemporary role of the architect and the changing material organization of society. Nevertheless, if we take into consideration
that 22% of the 6,300,000,000 realestate assets owned by the six major Portuguese banks are unfinished and unoccupied buildings (a figure that, according
to Dirio Econmico and Jornal de Negcios, has doubled from 2009 to 2013 and
for which the tendency is to keep rising),
there is a challenging undertaking waiting to happen in Portuguese urbanity,
one that is pregnant with potential both
in creative as well as in financial terms.
Collective
Unbox yourself into

The Moscavide mixed-use project opens
up a window of opportunity for experimenting with new domestic space organizations and lays the path for the
search for contemporary alternatives to
the monotonous housing types, propagated en mass by the Industry.
It proposes to explore the zero degree condition of housing by advancing a proposal for user-determined
spatial and material appropriation:
the domestication of cubic meters of
space. This is the starting point of the
creation of multiple micro-universes
This is the
starting point
of the creation
of multiple
micro-universes
- containers of
extended ways
of inhabiting, in
which the inherent
reductionism of its
design expresses
the differentiation
of use possibilities
- containers of extended ways of inhabiting, in which the inherent reductionism of the design expresses the
differentiation of use possibilities.
Given the inherent indeterminacy of
the assembly of dwellings, the coexistence of a wide array of individual
Politics
The dwelling unit as a point of entry toward the project of the city
ADOC
choices can be both as exciting as unpredictable, but its merits are to be

evaluated in an extended timeframe
and not at the moment of the buildings completion.
The subsequent challenge was to
find an operable tectonic solution to
the concept. Therefore, ADOC, in
partnership with SILOGIA, a Lisbon
based wall panel manufacturer, are
developing a prefabricated system
that adapts the modular partition system generally used for offices to domestic requirements, thus bringing
into the realm of housing a fundamental component of todays workplace architecture.
This system is characterized by its
flexibility and adaptability to any preexisting construction. It is prefabricated, lightweight, easy to install, can
carry water, electrical or electronic
infrastructures, and it is re-positionable and re-usable. The components
of the panel itself can vary to serve
different acoustic, thermal, waterproofing, or aesthetic needs, in order
to adjust to any required domestic
function. It produces reduced waste
and can be assembled by the final
user in a reduced timeframe. Therefore, the partition system provides a
pragmatic answer to the constant
change of modern life. The living
space can become the unmediated reflection of the real necessities and desires of the dweller.
Ultimately, the project revisits the
Modern dream of universal space and
domestic apparatus while reconciling
it with architectures core role as a
builder of participative cities. The
concrete void of the domestic space is
the milieu of architectural speculation where the Collective is addressed
in its multiplicity, and the design is allowed to decouple itself from the
shackles of the pervasive homogenization of housing models, only to finally return to a fundamental rethinking of the conditions of production of contemporary housing.
DOMESTIC CELL AUTOMATON: An interchangeable and evolutional basis for the

reprogramming of home's identity that celebrates individual choice
DESIGN YOURSELF INTO YOUR HOME
[Detailing] Re-adjusting the architectural debate towards concrete decisions rather than abstract ideology
Interview : Miguel Judas
On architecture
and regulation
Academic
Excellence
Mariana
Brando wins
Archiprix
Portugal award
PEDRO CAMPOS COSTA

& MIGUEL EUFRSIA
1. The panorama of the Portuguese

building regulations is profoundly
complex and anachronistic, typified
by an endless overlapping of laws and
regulations. Probably the most paradigmatic case is the RGEU, General
Regulation for Urban Construction,
published in 1951 as an agent of reform and which is still in effect today.
What can we make of this situation?
The RGEU was developed by the dictatorial regime after WW2, in a context of
enormous insufficiencies in the housing
domain. It is a truly remarkable document because it is a commitment between the assembling of comprehensive
construction rules for a precarious builder class and the setting of safety and sanitary standards. This kind of pragmatic
compromise in times of urgency is typically Portuguese. It is a progressive document because it sets parameters both for
urban planning and for minimum dwelling areas that resonate with the Modern
concepts of efficiency, hygienism and existenzminimum. On the other hand, it is
very reactionary because, for instance, it
includes a chapter dedicated to 'building
aesthetics', a control mechanism of the
avant-garde. Nowadays, the RGEU is an
almost totally useless piece of regulation,
but its conception as a matrix, open to
subsequent superimposition of specialist
regulations, guaranteed its endurance.
2. Despite the increasing economic
and financial deregulation and decreasing government investment in
social issues, there is a pervasive
conformist tendency in the recent
Portuguese building laws that, under
the pretext of regulating new technologies, hinders innovation at several levels. What is the reason for
this paradox?
The Law has an innate predisposition
towards being conservative. While reality is plural, dynamic and tends to
evolve, regulations crystallize a certain
reading of reality. Regarding the Portuguese case I would underline two motives for the magnification of this tendency: the legislator's relentless view of
the citizen as a potential offender and
the widespread awareness that the law
courts do not function. The Portuguese
legislation tends to maximize the predetermination of events as if the future
could be immune to conflict and arbitration... Moreover, the legislative initiative
has demonstrated an enormous inability (or laziness) to adjust to the country's
functioning structures and mechanisms. Therefore, we are left with the
consequent outcome: an exquisit corpse
(cadavre exquis).
3. How can we move forward in this
legislative jumble? Given the poor results of building regulations and the
drastic decline in the building activity
(a drop of 75% in the last decade),
should architects battle for a de-bureaucratization, proposing the easing
of some specific norms or even the abolition of some decrees?
In order to de-bureaucratize, everything should become clearer and simpler. I do not have the silver bullet, but I
see no other way other than to shift the
emphasis from administrative control
to personal or collective responsibility:
to concede more responsibility to the authors of a project.
The irony of the discussion regarding
the Portuguese building law is that the
unintelligibility and splintering of regulations and the impossibility to fulfil all
the conditions they require has had an
unforeseen and paradoxical consequence of liberation. It produced the
predisposition of distancing the design
process from the world of regulations,
arguably contributing to the high quality of architecture in Portugal. At the
end of the day, we are left with the righteousness of Portuguese saying: What
has no solution is already solved.
The 2014 Archiprix Jury selected the

architects Mariana Brando and Giacomo
Gallo (Special Mention) between eleven
shortlisted nominees in a ceremony held
at Lisbon Architecture Triennale
Promontorio, TELHEIRAS HOUSING, Telheiras district, Lisbon, 1993 1997 Rui morais de sousa
The requirement of ethics
Housing Cooperatives are a very powerful lesson about freedom and compromise
JOO LUS FERREIRA

Founder Partner of PROMONTORIO
There was once this philosopher

called Socrates, for many people
just a lazy cynic who spent his
days at the Athenian Agora arguing with self-proclaimed wise
men that would come to tell him
their supposed absolute truths
and to whom he proved their ignorance without giving any explanation or answer, which
could lead them to conclusions.
And we are fortunate for this. In
this way he invented philosophy
and gave mankind the possibility of being free. He taught us
Know thyself which means:
first of all to know that you are
an individual and as an individual you must recognize and understand your individuality,
your difference and your singularity. As man does not live
alone, man will find himself, will
recognize himself and will understand himself through his relationships with other fellow
men. Society should not transform individuality into equality
but encourage the truth that lies
in diversity.
Today, the benefits of collectivism are no longer serving the
anachronistic political purposes
of the past, where man was seen
as a generic being and not as an
individual withhis own personal identity. Ironically, those who
profit the most from this new
idea of collectivism is the industrial society that we have become (everything today is an industry, from communication to
education, or tourism), and its
products, meant to either simplify our lives or to entertain us,
with politics, sport and the endless opinions of their commentators, modern day sophists,
wholl speak about everything
without knowing anything
about it. For the leaders of this
industrial society the People are
merely a strategic target constantly manipulated to consume their products. However,
a collective is a sum, an aggregation, not a substance. Man is
an individual despite the fact
that he wants to live in community with other men and wants
to share public space, be it the
corridor of a housing block or a
street in the city.
Cooperation and cooperativism
Promontorio, BLOCO CARNIDE, Carnide historical district, Lisbon,

1999 2003 Fernando Guerra
are good words to mans best interests. If I decide to cooperate

then I share. Stemming from
many experiences of the human
history of dwelling, there has
been a move towards free enterprise, away from public impositions, or their absence, and
against the power of the main
contractors: the housing cooperatives. I choose my plot of
land, I choose the architect, I am
part of the process, I control the
budget and I have a house that
reflects my wishes, my dreams,
but that also respects other peoples wishes and dreams. I
dream, but I share. If I share, I
look for compromises and I look
for the best possible balance.
Though I live in a community I
am free. The housing cooperative is a very powerful lesson
about freedom and compromise. Getting to grips with and
establishing boundaries for the
compromise between the indi-
vidual and the group is the most

interesting part of the process.
First, theres the legal commitment and then the pact with the
architect, which becomes sort of
a long, drawn out date.
The arguments start when the
architect provides the client (actually the clients) with his vision
for the building and the environment. There was a brief and an
initial inquiry to capture the intentions of the members of the
cooperative. With his professional expertise and his nostalgic or futuristic references, the
architect has to present a response to this. That answer is an
interpretation, a creation, something new that nobody had expected before; not because it is
strange, but because being
something it excludes all the
other infinite possibilities of being. It is a reality. The discussion
moves on and decisions start to
be made one by one. Amongst
themselves, the members face

the architects proposal. They
try to find a common position.
Some dare to accept what they
recognize as a challenge, others
are always too worried about
sticking to their initial requests,
and then there are those who
start to gently sway. The architect argues, the members argue,
sometimes their different positions become polarized. There
is a fight, but the arguments are
within reason, and no one is too
radical to not accept the others
view, after all they are all looking for a successful end. Like a
paradox in philosophy, this
deadlock situation is a crucial
moment. Once reached, there is
a sort of liberation, an opportunity to look back and rebuild
everything with the pieces that
matter, leaving out the negative
parts and slowly finding our way
back to reach a compromise.
The architect struggles with
himself, with the client, with the
authorities, with the budget, because he knows that he will be
questioned or remembered for
the beauty of the building, for
the comfort of the spaces or for
the robustness of its specifications. Different levels of responsibility require the capacity to be
coherent and carry out a project, and a building, that will
represent something with
meaning for the members of the
cooperative, but also for the city
or for the culture of architecture, a completed work that is
open to both the community and
to human intellect. This is why
architecture is related to the
Great Arts and may never be reduce to a quirk. No one can enclose architecture in front of a
private audience separated
from reality. Architecture is the
integration of all levels of knowledge, from the physical and
technical to the spiritual level
where the lightness of its grace
lies. How successfully this integration is done is what distinguishes great architecture from
meaningless architecture. In
this dimension, architecture is
more than aesthetics and becomes ethics. If this reality does
not lie deep in the conscience of
architects, the experience of
working on a collective dwelling
introduces this sense of compromise that awakes us for the ethical requirement.
Mariana Brando
(ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon,
Professor Jos Lus Possolo de Saldanha)
Archiprix started in 1979 in the

Netherlands and is internationally
recognized as one of the most
prestigious architecture and urbanism
academic awards for excellence.
Archiprix Portugal was established
by Serra Henriques Foundation (Lisbon)
and Archiprix Foundation (Rotterdam)
involving the Portuguese architecture
universities and the Order of Architects.
The global network compromises similar
initiatives in Chile, Netherlands, Italy,
Turkey, Russia and Central Europe
(Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Bosnia
and Croatia)
Nominees
Pedro Ribeiro (Professors Joo Maria Trindade

and Nuno Crespo); Cristina Duarte (Professor
Maria Dulce Costa Campos Louo); Hugo
Ferreira (Professor Ana Sofia Pereira da Silva);
Eduardo Oliveira (Professor Nuno Jos Ribeiro
Loureno Fonseca); Mariana Calvete (Professor
Jos Aguiar); Fbio Correia (Professor Ana Vaz
Milheiro); Rui Rua (Professor Daniel Jimnez
Ferrera); Joo Moreira (Professor Jorge Spencer);
Joo Ramos (Professor Joaquim Moreno);
Giacomo Gallo (Professors lvaro Antnio Gomes
Domingues and Daniel Casas Valle)
Rehab
Rehab
New software for

an old city
Artria bypassed
the standard
conventions that
are endlessly
debated at
congresses
on design and
architectural
rehabilitation
rui pinheiro
When it was presented at the opening

of the Venice Biennale, the Lisbon Skyline Operation created some fuss in Lisbon. Could it really be so simple to reverse its decay? No one knows, but one
thing is certain: the Skyline Operation
is not the only strategy being developed.
There is tremendous pressure from
tourism over the whole of the downtown area, which often threatens the
very qualities it is supposed to deliver.
Neither the local population aged and
living on low incomes nor the citys
economic fabric are in a position to
counterbalance the power of the international investment funds currently
vying for a chance to reshape its social

and economic landscape. The architectural impact of these investments on the
urban landscape is gradually becoming
visible and, under the magic guise of urban rehabilitation, a new city is obliterating some of Lisbons unique qualities. By providing both the means and
stage of the rooftop hypothesis. From

the point of view of architecture it
can be an opportunity to re-think the
fifth facade and add a new layer to the
city in favour of its future.
Underlying the creation of the Skylines Handbook, the coming together
of several skills around the same table: architecture, urbanism, law, environmental engineering and management. It will provide models of action aimed at condominiums and investors. The goal is to create, together with the Central and Local Government, an operative model for urban regeneration.
In the consolidated city our role as
architects is to create continuity, to
think and program new uses for cities, searching for new ways of acting,
becoming more pro-active, facing
problems and proposing project-solutions. Approaching the urban
needs by shifting our viewpoint can
lead to more accurate and sustainable architectural interventions and
to more conscious and efficient urban strategies.
sc. XX
Lisbon Skyline Operation [LSO] explores a hypothesis to invert the citys

degradation through the use of the
inactive upper floors common areas,
of Lisbon's residential buildings.
Looking up at the citys rooftops, seeing them as a creative territory, and
using architectural tools one can envision futuristic images. Nevertheless it is fundamental to understand
and accept the citys complexity. Artria studio and the law practice Piscarreta & Associados joined efforts
to conceive a multilayered overview
of Lisbon, crossing architecture with
the legal framework underlying the
citys organization. Artria studio
was set up to discuss the problematic
of urban renewal, inscribed in an adverse socio-economical context for
the practice of architecture and arts.
It assimilated scarcity and started to
attempt to break into this territory
through a critical perspective,
searching for the needs, the incongruities, the paradoxes and designing
solutions for the opportunities provided by so many absences. We reflect upon intervention hypothesis,
knowing from our experience that
our city needs architecture, not necessarily construction.
Lisbon needs regeneration software, designed to run through its
temporal strata, with the precision to
recover and bring back to life its old
and precious files. With this in mind,
many ideas can come to the table. The
Lisbon Skyline Operation is the result of a collective vision, designed to
be a new software for an old city with
the purpose of activating its regeneration. Its not about form, it is about
building a process, an instruction
manual to reach the implementation
We reflect upon
intervention
hypothesis,
knowing from
our experience
that our
city needs
architecture,
not necessarily
construction
Lisbon Storeys: Lisbon's historic strata in a building,

presenting the XXI \century as a top floor room with a view
Scheme Artria and Armanda Vilar , 2014
Lisbon Skyline: a hidden key to pursue the citys regeneration

Campo Pequeno
XIX century
Graa district
Colnias district
XX century
ANDR TAVARES
Avenidas Novas
XX century
S. Jorge Castle
X century
Scheme Artria and Armanda Vilar , 2014
Lisbon Cathedral
XIIXIII century
Alfama/ Mouraria
district
Baixa Pombalina
XVIII century
NUMBER OF BUILDINGS OF
LISBONS MUNICIPALITY PER
CONSTRUCTION PERIOD
Terreiro do Pao
XVIII century
ortuguese architecture is
known for the qualities of its
design and detailing. Proposals like the Lisbon Skyline
Operation have aroused
some perplexity in the more
conservative Portuguese circles. Absorbing modernity
throughout the twentieth century, Portuguese architects have proved their
ability as service providers. Architecture has become synonymous with design, the sophisticated mastery of construction techniques, and talent for responding to complex circumstances
with a poetic flavour. Internationally
acclaimed, the success enjoyed by some
Portuguese architects has tended to
crystallise the local perception of architects as mere designers. Technical competence has seemingly entrusted architects with a presumed moral superiority, struggling to improve society
through the excellence of their response. Faced with the failures of urban growth and social inequalities,
they found comfort in the pristine quality of their buildings. Although this cartoon-like picture is heavily ironic in
tone, in Portugal there is an ongoing
debate on the limits and possibilities of
the architectural profession. Artrias
Lisbon Skyline Operation is symptomatic of such controversy. Why are architects suggesting a strategy instead
of a specific design? In actual fact, Artria is not prescribing any one specific
model to apply to all Lisbon rooftops; it
might seem that their work is more of
a political or social proposition than an
architectural output. So what? Their
ability to put forward a strategy to rehabilitate many of Lisbons decadent
dwellings is the outcome of an architectural line of reasoning. And it might establish the terms for a whole host of future architectural commissions.
Should architects abandon the ground
of social and cultural innovations that
they conquered with such great effort
throughout the twentieth century?
When there are no appointments to design , stepping back might be a practical solution: not only to find commissions, but also to root future practice in
a deeper social context. Whatever the
case, the preliminary success of the Lisbon Skyline Operation highlights the
contemporary need for such architectural knowledge.
Alvalade
XX century
Senhora do Monte scenic lookout

XII century
Lisbon is an old city, where about 90% of the buildings date back to before 1985
and more than a half are in need of repair. Since 1991 the city has lost about 9500
buildings, which illustrates the scale of real estate investment operations that
tend to merge small plots into larger buildings that are easier to monetize, but
change the urban and social fabrics.
Modern
Perpletixities
Tagus River
22.389 <1951
2011
52.496
53.387
62.041
2001
[Source: INE, CENSOS]
lightful views over the urban landscape. Furthermore, renovating them

in line with contemporary technical
solutions would provide enormous
benefits in terms of reducing energy
costs. If a building is prepared to make
an investment in its rooftop, this will
help to provide the income needed for
its rehabilitation. The panoramic
views over Lisbon from the various scenic lookouts suggest endless possibilities for countering the decay of the
citys downtown area.
ARTRIA
sc . XIX
To help deal with Lisbons urgent rehabilitation, Artria has recommended

what it describes as a Skyline Operation. Instead of making bombastic
statements or offering technical solutions for an unsolved problem, they
have chosen to address the question of
housing rehabilitation through the socalled rooftop hypothesis. If one of
the main causes of urban decay is the
lack of resources to help inhabitants
keep buildings in good shape, why not
find a new and as yet unexploited way
of enhancing their savings and funding
the much needed rehabilitation? The
roofs of a large number of Lisbons historical buildings are held in commonhold by their inhabitants. Currently
unused, such spaces might offer de-
sc. XVIII
ANDR TAVARES
the strategies for part of the population

to become actively involved in the citys
rehabilitation, the Lisbon Skyline Operation seeks to counterbalance an apparently irreversible process by mobilizing its inhabitants.
The possibility of involving the citys
elderly population has not escaped the
radars of local authorities. After the
proposals initial presentation in Venice, Artria compared its research with
the results of the census undertaken in
two of Lisbons neighbourhoods, Anjos
and Pena. They noticed that the share
of commonhold properties is about
60% of total housing, with such buildings being on average between 76 and
84 years old and housing a population
of 13,487 inhabitants. Confining the
problem to these two neighbourhoods
allowed Artria to propose an exhaustive survey of 1021 buildings, directly
encouraging the inhabitants to debate
the Skyline Operation. The proposal
was presented to the municipality,
which, through its support program
for intervention in social priority
neighbourhoods (BIP/ZIP), awarded a
grant of 50,000 euros to develop the
survey and to publish a handbook of legal and technical solutions.
Such recognition and trust in the innovative qualities of an architectural response are encouraging. Contrary to
the great works of the internationally
acclaimed Portuguese architecture,
Artria responded to the question of
Lisbons rehabilitation by proposing an
alternative participatory model. They
bypassed the standard conventions
that are endlessly debated at congresses on design and architectural rehabilitation and without even a drawinor a prefiguration they managed to
arouse the curiosity of both private and
public sectors about an architectural
solution. This is yet further proof of the
fact that architecture is not only about
design or technical solutions, something that we have known full well ever
since Vitruvius. So, then, if this is not a
novelty, what is the news? The news is
both the ongoing debate that has begun
about Lisbons downtown rehabilitation
and the debate about the skills of Portuguese architects.
sc. XVII
The Lisbon skyline handbook

is on the making
sc. XXI
Seen from above: rooftops offer common areas to envision contemporary action over
the complex web of property and interests currently leading to urban decay
After its presentation in Venice, Artrias proposal received a local authority grant of 50,000
for its development
1991
25.578 19511985 5.420 19862001
Rehab
Culture
Rs-do-Cho
Lessons from the sixties: Cabea Padro, Jos-Augusto Frana and Fernando Tvora
Rehabilitating rehabilitation
Jos Aguiar, Vitor
Ribeiro & Miguel
Reimo Costa
Architect and Professor at the

University of Lisbon, Architect and PhD
student at the University of Lisbon,
Architect and Professor at the
University of Algarve
LSO is an architectural,
legal and economic tool to
rehabilitate the city through
the collective endeavour
of its inhabitants: step by
step, house by house,
roof by roof.
This urban operation is
reported in the Portuguese
Pavillion at the 14th
International Architecture
Exhibition of La Biennale di
Venezia 2014
What is the Lisbon

Skyline Operation?
LSO is a strategy to
regenerate the city through
its roofs. LSO presents the
upper floors of a building
as an economic resource
to rehabilitate entire
structures. LSO wants
to reshape old rooftops
allowing their full use as an
asset and a key element for
Lisbons rehabilitation. LSO
interventions will provide
social, economical and
environmental return for the
city and its inhabitants.
What is the identified

problem?
The dilapidated state of
buildings in Lisbons historic

districts is obvious. The
financial difficulties that
Lisbon Skyline
Operation
LSO is an architectural, legal and economic tool to
rehabilitate the city through the collective endeavor of it's
inhabitants: step by step, house by house, roof by roof
will upgrade historical

buildings and establish an
effective strategy for the
citys regeneration.
LSO will recreate rooftops
and integrate measures to
enhance biodiversity and
energy efficiency, key factors
in the rehabilitation and
improvement of the urban
environment.
Why invest in
Lisbons rooftops?
condominiums face prevent
them from undertaking the
necessary maintenance
works and lead to a decay of
buildings spread throughout
the city. The resulting
panorama is a large number
of deteriorated but inhabited
buildings. LSO is a tool to
enable the rehabilitation of
these buildings, designed to
revert this ongoing cycle.
What is this idea

founded on?
LSO strategy is based upon

the notion of communal
space. A great number
of historical buildings in
downtown Lisbon have the
ownership of their roofs
attributed to common
property, this creates a
significant asset that allows

engendering investment
solutions with great
consequence for the city. LSO
starts by revealing the roofscape as a physical resource
for the citys rehabilitation
allowing the creation of a
new inhabited skyline for
Lisbon.
Who can join the

Lisbon Skyline
Operation?
LSO proposes a winwin strategy for both

condominiums and investors.
LSO designs a strategy that
fits both sides, combining
community requirements
with investors perspective.
Providing the city with an
architectonic, economic and
legal tool for its endemic

rehabilitation, maintaining
the basis of its social
fabric. Thus, neighbours
organizations and investors
can get together in a
profitable and innovative
partnership.
What can rooftops

do for the city?
LSO is literally a top down

strategy. Top floors present
several construction
problems: the majority
are badly built, poorly
insulated, and have low
quality of lighting and
salubrity. By understanding
the morphology of Lisbons
rooftops and channeling
twenty first century building
technology, this operation
Lisbon is the ideal city

to invest in rooftops.
The citys topography offers
unique views from rooftops,
mansards, terraces; from
these one has access to
outstanding panoramic urban
views. LSO embodies the
vision advocated in
the current Local
Development Plan for Lisbon
[PDML] which advocates
the use of attics and the
possibility to change the
overall configuration of
rooftops to provide its
effective use. Skyline
investments are available
to an enormous range of
investors, from common
citizens in search of a
home to call their own, to
investors who want to be
placed the best location.
Both Architecture and Rehabilitation, seen as a new design paradigm, are nowadays confronted
with the phenomena of globalization, standardization and forced
amnesia, which translate (in the
opinion of Franoaise Choay) into
a loss of our capacity to build (and
reuse). The predominance of cultural consumerism (architectural
as well as that of the iconic architecture of the starchitects) fosters
a semantic de-complexifying of
spatial planning, together with the
de-contextualization and atomization of architectural production.
At the same time, it also promotes
the rehabilitation of urban built
heritage as theme parks for mass
touristic consumption: heritage
became a rushed alternative to the
grey sameness of an increasingly
more monosomic world.
In this framework, a new heritage fetishism can be perceived,
one which is grounded in a reactionary ideology (from the time
we were so religious, patriotic,
pure and good and how amoral,
cosmopolitan, mixed and evil we
are today), and a shameless commercialization of heritage, which
is exploited in the same way as any
other resource, thus becoming a
commodity. In the new mass industry that exploits experiences
of the past, historical centres
become the new Disneylands or
theme parks, complete with medieval fairs or chocolate festivals.
Architectural magazines exalt
the egotism of authorial icons when
confronted with urban heritage.
The current discussion on historical urban landscape is the ideal setting for this confrontation (look to
our next door neighbours' Madrids
Caixaforum, or Las Setas
Metropol Parasol or the Pelli tower in Seville, for notable examples,
whilst on our side these have always
more concealed and mediocre, such
as the facade extravaganza of Heron Castilho Lisboa [building] or
that of the Cardosas Porto). And
all of this results in a fundamental
injustice (mixed with some revanchism, if we follow Neil Smiths
sharp reasoning): an accelerated
process of social segregation (gentrification), promoted by the majority of European countries and beyond (Neil Smith quotes the USA,
Canada, New Zealand, Japan and
Brazil), is driving the poor out of the
historical centres and denying
them the right to the city (Henri
Lefbvre). The rehabilitation of urban (and cultural) heritage is directed towards tastes of ample economic capacity, in an exclusive, selective
fruition. This is the new dream of
the real estate peddlers, historical
centres as private condominiums
and the heart-wrenching loss of collective identity that follows!
Picture from Fernando Tavora, Study of Barredo Urban Renewal F. Tavora family archives
"Continuationthroughinnovation.
People
are worth
infinitely more
than houses"
When regarding contemporary
processes of segregation and urban landscape concerns , it is important to remember the lessons
of three portuguese pioneers from
the 60s, Fernando Tvora, Cabea
Padro and Jos-Augusto Frana,
who authored three proposals
that remain, for the most part,
largely unknown. Three visions
whose confrontation with the international context of their time
brought Portugal, in as little as
half a decade, to the forefront of
the reflection on the conservation
of urban heritage (and vernacular
architectural practices). They did
so by proposing innovative models
as opposed to the alleged inevitability of the need for substitution

and sanitization in urban renewal
as embraced by Modernism.
These proposals had the additional intention of integrating the
principles of the protection of urban heritage into the instruments
of design, urban planning and territorial planning.
In the Algarve, architect Cabea Padro developed the pioneering but largely unknown
studies of Prospeco e defesa
da paisagem urbana do Algarve
[Survey and protection of the Algarves urban landscape], carried
out between 1965 and 1970 under
the tutelage of the DirectorateGeneral for Urbanization Services (DGSU) which also saw, in
1968, the pioneering creation of
a Service for the Protection and
Restoration of Rural Landscape.
The fundamental idea was to
study and delimit urban and vernacular centres with significant
heritage value, seeking to protect
them from the intense process of
urban renewal that had started
in the meantime. There was a
plan for fifty publications docu-
menting the heritage, architectural and landscape value of forty-seven centres of which thirty-eight volumes were produced
and were then forgotten about
somewhere in the central administration archives (which facilitated countless shady dealings).
In Lisbon, the Estudo das zonas ou unidades urbanas de
carcter histrico-artstico
[Study of urban zones or units of
historical-artistic character], authored by historian Jos-Augusto
Frana and promoted by the Municipality in 1967, proposed the
demarcation and preservation of
different centres of the so-called
Pombaline style or period,
which form part of the rehabilitation programme of Illuminist
architecture fostered by the Marquis of Pombal after the 1755
earthquake. Regarded and understood, as a whole, as a document
for understanding the global picture from the various master
plans produced in the 18th century, they redesigned privileged areas for preservation to be established through the Urban Development Master Plan for Lisbon.
Fernando Tvora, Estudo de Renovao Urbana do Barredo. Regeneration of the block QIII Barredo: status and proposed elevations
Drawing FIMS / FT / 0197-01-0030, Fundao Instituto Marques da Silva, archives
Though distinct in their propositional approach and depth of academic research framing each of
the proposals far more developed in the case of J. A. Frana for
Lisbon these studies share an
acknowledgement of the recentlyestablished importance given to
issues of urban image, referring
us to the studies of Gordon Cullen
and Kevin Lynch .
On a different note, the studies
of Cabea Padro for the Algarve
propose a strong component of
correction and scenography to the
changes detected, which entailed
a considerable amount of works
said to be therapeutic. This resulted in a degree of economic unfeasibility and a reduction in practical
effects, which owes something to
a kind of symptomatic effacement
or provoked forgetfulness these
studies of Survey and protection
of the Algarves urban landscape
were subjected to for decades.
In the studies of Frana and Cabea Padro, rehabilitation priorities were not yet defined as part
of an integrated model for the conservation of heritage like the one
proposed by Tvora for the area of
Barredo, in Porto, which bears
close affinities to its contemporary protection plan proposed for
Bologne, Italy.
Integrating social sciences in a
pioneering way, Fernando Tvoras truly ground-breaking Estudo da Renovao urbana do
Barredo [Study for the Urban
Renovation of Barredo], was developed together with the Municipality of Porto in 1969 [and it is
important to bear in mind that,
at the time, the term rehabilitation was not in use, only much
later through the initiatives of
the European Council in the mid
70s did it become widespread].
Rejecting the Modernist-driven
intentions of a systematic demolition of Portos historical neighbourhoods, which until then had
been considered insalubrious but which today are listed as a
World Heritage site Tvora proposes a new goal , that of an integrated and more cautious rehabilitation, searching for a model
capable of being rolled out to the
whole city.
With its conception of rehabilitation that is absolutely contemporary and offers the individual
perspective of the architect (and
of his/her role in general), it is
Tvoras proposal in particular
that has nowadays acquired a
new, specific relevance. This is
owed to the inclusive character
that it acknowledges or proposes
(by associating physical action to
social intervention), as well as by
the social and cultural dimension
of what is at stake: People are
worth infinitely more than houses, and by the emphasis placed
on the importance of participation (active, not merely acquiescent). Above all, Tvoras proposal stands out for the enduring
lessons that the past assures the
future, as it establishes a principle that postulates and synthesizes its entire programme, that
of continuation-through-innovation, in a constant movement
for change towards better conditions, but respecting the positive
values that may exist and should
not, therefore, be destroyed.
This encompasses the surpassing of the dichotomy between
major art practices/minor art
practices and the rejection of
pastiche. All of these principles
had already been stated by Tvora in the early 60s, in his book Da
Organizao do Espao (1962)
[Of the Organization of Space]. It
was thus that integrated rehabilitation was invented in our midst!
Rs-do-Cho (Ground Floor) is

the name of an initiative led by a
group of 4 young architects that
identified the vacancy of commercial ground floors as a main
cause for the built heritage degradation in Lisbon. With the aim
of promoting the occupation of
vacant ground floors as a promoter of urban regeneration,
they began to develop a project
with two complementary fronts:
raising the awareness of the importance and benefits of occupying commercial ground floors
and creating a network between
all the concerned parties: owners, tenants, associations and local merchants. Looking for proposing new ways of occupancy
and tenancy, they propose the
idea of co-working spaces as a
more affordable solution. They
gave the example with their
workspace rehabilitating a vacant ground floor for their studio. The pilot project of rehabilitation in the ground floor is now
encouraging the rehabilitation
on the other floors.
Zara Ferreira
Agulha
num Palheiro
In Lisbon there are nearly 1,900
empty buildings in urgent need
of intervention they say. Needle
in a Haystack is a project developed by the architecture studio
Artria. Its first phase was funded by the Lisbons City Council
BIP/ZIP program created by the
Local Housing Program, in 2011,
enabling the creation of a website: an online platform that identifies and share information
about old vacant houses in the
center of Lisbon, available in the
real estate market. The main
goal was to turn the process of
searching for old houses to rehabilitate, to live in the city center,
into an easy task.
On a second phase Needle in
a Haystack was supported by the
Crisis Buster Grant promoted by
the 2013 Lisbon Architecture
Triennale, allowing the construction of an instruction manual to guide citizens on the process of refurbishing their properties.
Designed as a clarifying and
intuitive tool to support the rehabilitation of the Lisbon center, this project articulates a
mapping of possible rehabilitation cases connecting new clients with institutional partners
or real estate agents with a specific know how given by qualified professionals about the
whole process of rehabilitation,
both in technical and legal
terms.
In times of economic crisis,
Needle in a Haystack believes
the community has an important role to play in regeneration;
through this project, citizens
are closer to know how they can
participate of the revitalization
of their city, in the most sustainable way for everyone.
Zara Ferreira
http://www.agulhanumpalheiro.pt/
Detached
Detached
Back to basics a conversation with SAMI Arquitectos
All about the

house
On architecture
and being an
architect
Susana: At the penultimate Venice
Biennale, Hans-Ulrich Obrist made an
interview series with several architects
and artists where he always started with
the same question. Despite it only making sense if one could draw a continuous
line between that moment (which Obrist
defines as an awakening) and the work
produced (which is impossible) as a homage and continuity to that series of interviews: What was your epiphany?
Miguel: There were several epiphanies but they were immediately contrabalanced by moments of great questioning. It is a permanent dichotomy.
Ins: More than an awakening there
are some moments of clairvoyance associated to the project process.
S: Well have to go back to the beginning and to your education as architects to understand your way of thinking and doing architecture, because in
it we are able to identify characteristics
that stem from a very specific Portuguese architectonic culture, like the importance you attribute to the place,
which you seek to understand under
various aspects, the respect for History,
the research about materials. Still in
the wake of Obrists question, he usually asks the architects who were their
heroes or influences in the field of
architecture. Inside that question, Id
like to ask you which were your references that made you alter your perception, and, consequently, your way of doing architecture. Or, on the contrary, if
any experience, as for instance, the pro-
Miguel: In our case there is total focus

on the project because we are interested
in understand how we may be profound,
rigorous, conceptual, make each decision
reflect a thought through practice. And
for that the client is a fundamental piece.
As Terence Riley refers about the detached house on the The un-private
house exhibition, a singular house always stems from a forward thinking client. I think this is one of the fundamental
precepts of our work: having clients who
are specialists about being clients, because they are critical, they address us.
M: When we started working in 2002

Siza was the reference from our education and Herzog&DeMeuron were an
interpellation: why would Siza work on
form, on space, where matter seemed a
more neutral element to allow the exercise to be of light and space and why
were H&dM building out of wood, stone
or plastic? Later, Zumthor appears because of the idea of a project being a
nearly never-ending process, but the
biggest references are from the first
half of the 20th century: Lewerentz,
Loos, Mies van der Rohe, facing questions which lie in the eternal doubt of
what may we want to add.
I: Having started working at Pico islandAzores is indissociable from our way of
thinking architecture. The most interesting was forcing us to go back to what
is essential in architecture. We wanted
to shed all kind of effects, to pursue what
is really important in the project: the
light, the space, the form, the adequacy
of function, the work with the clients
and the matter. We went very far, to Ordos-China, to realise that our place is
here simply because we feel Portuguese:
the scale of our buildings, the use of materials, the preoccupations in the domain of the art of construction and what
it may have of poetic. It is not a limitation, it is not a simplification, it is our
way of thinking and doing architecture.
S: In the current panorama of architecture where several architects play such
different roles as curators, performers,
among others, where even architecture
schools question the teaching of the discipline traditionally centred on the exercise of the architectural project, SAMI
seem to resist that tendency with a very
clear idea of what is architecture and
what an architect does, this idea stemming, mainly, from the built work. What
is your role as architects, for which you
feel responsible? Because it is felt in the
time you demand for a project, the responsibility you assume, in what is asked
of you is always faced with unmatched
acuity, as if it is life itself and, in a way, it
is the life of those who inhabit space.
2m
First Part
- and ends up defending a way of looking, thinking and doing architecture.

What is your understanding of the conceptual and speculative exercises about
the program of the detached house,
which led you to assume it, starting as
well from your previous experiences?
ject of Villa Ordos 100 made you reaffirm further still your way of designing?
in June 2014, Susana Ventura sat down for a conversation with architects Ins
Vieira da Silva and Miguel Vieira, founders of SAMI Arquitectos, at their Setbal
office. They are mainly known for their built projects, of which there are already
quite a few, despite being a young architecture office. The built work rests
therefore at the core of architecture and it is, for them, its irreducible expression,
perpetuating a large Portuguese tradition of construction and of the ineffable
search for the right composition in architectural work. Conducted in three
parts, this interview explores their ideas on architecture and their role as young
architects concentrated in the difficult exercises of designing the evidence (to
quote lvaro Siza), their ideas on the detached house beyond types, but towards
the particularities of the constraints and the elements of architecture in the
real space, taking their built work as example, and finally around the space of
intimacy, the ongoing project for the Venice Architecture Biennale, which seeks to
understand a relationship which is absent today from the built work: what happens
between the wall and the body.
The detached house is now at the centre of the city (view of the pathway that links
the Albarquel Fort to the city centre of Setbal) paulo catrica
I: Time is essential because we want to

go as far as possible into each project
be it a house or a public building. It is
an exercise of much revision, insistence, confirmation, searching for the
right form, the right ambience, trying
Ins: The pertinence of the project is

being built as youre looking for the
problems that are at stake and you set
certain variables with the certainty
that you have deepened your knowledge and then circle around trying to
understand where the project may be
heading. When you have a client that
triangulation of ideas becomes even
more pertinent.
to find the moment where we feel some

poetry in it.
M: I think that the idea of responsibility
is key for us and has to do with our character, also being indissociable from our
society. It is a kind of permanent weight.
Therefore time is a sort of an insurance
and guaranty because you make, see, remake, see again and ponder
M: We never know when we set off for
a project which are the variables that
are at stake, what are the singularities
of each project. Only the process will
reveal what is important. Villa Ordos
100 is paradigmatic of that sense of responsibility. Our neighbourhood of a
hundred young architects selected to
build a 1000m2 villa was completely irrelevant in China compared to Portugal
where a house is the place where you
will live forever. Still on the question of
responsibility, it will be as important to
defend and explain an idea as being
able to frame our options, knowing that
our decisions follow a common thread.
I: The idea for the ideas sake is not

something were interested in, it doesnt
give us anything that endures. The sensation of the perennial, of density, of
intentionality, in the projects, is completely opposed to speed and superficiality. It doesnt make sense for us to act
without having that will to make something pertinent.
S: On a text about the Portuguese difference, Jorge Figueira mentions that
SAMI represent a sensibility rooted in
our [Portuguese] practice: pragmatism
with a ludic sense; enlightened formal
effect with few means; poetic ponderation and practice of the several project
components as motivation for architecture. For Figueira, the very exercise of
the project is the motive that structures the work, and the instruments,
used for creating it, are in turn those
that belong to the discipline of architecture: the program, the composition and
form, and the poetry you find in common things. How would you define your
work, understanding the ever present
dichotomy between method-instruments and the built work, to use Jorge

Figueiras words?
M: It is a theme I find most curious is
what motivates us to do things, how we
do them, what are the strategies. I wonder if it is possible to make a building out
of ideas alone. We treat ideas like we
treat the client, the budget, the place. An
idea exists but has to be worked on, has
to be understood, will be deepened with
time and then will be part of the project.
There isnt an idea as something imposing, conditioning the process, arriving
and solving it all. It is one of the elements
which make up the whole.
I: The process is a process of adding
and never removing information in order to concentrate or force an idea,
erasing everything that contradicts it.
You add information, test it, accept
some of the variables which may seem
like difficulties and you try to understand how they may give deepness an
complexity to the project.
DETACHED HOUSES by SAMI Arquitectos

Villa Ordos 100
Ordos. China.
Project 2008
Second Part
On the detached
house
Susana: When we started this adventure together, you said that you
didnt want to do speculative exercises.
If we look at the history of architecture
we realise that there are important moments of transformation of architecture itself attached to experimental detached houses, whose projects stem
from conceptual enunciations which
are assumed by the architects as mani-
festos, as for example, lEsprit Nouveau

pavilion by Le Corbusier, the House of
the Future by the Smithsons, the CaseStudy House by the Eames, or still, the
Endless House by Kiesler. As Colomina
states, the manifesto precedes the
work: it is a blueprint for the future.
Nevertheless, in your case it is the constructed work that precedes the manifesto - which is not actually a manifesto
S: Looking at your work the detached

house is the program you have developed the most, the reason for which the
curator invited you to think about this
type, possibly with the magnificent images of the C/Z house in his mind because we can hardly find a better example to plainly express the house in the
landscape, a house where the landscape is itself an inhabitant, where the
planes of glass, which unite the compact
volumes, disappear and the wind traverse space and the platform of the volumes extend infinitely through the field.
Curiously, if we think about the E/C
house, where there is an inversion of
the social space and the private space,
that inversion could be easily taken as
a subversion of the model of a two storey house but looking at your project,
we are able to understand where it
comes from. It is not your preoccupation the subversion of the model, the
re-defining it or the search for a more
abstract exercise, which may more easily transform into a type, but it is how
the things which stem from those particularities, you are finding, determine
each gesture. It would be interesting to
understand which were those exercises, those moments of clairvoyance, as
you said, where, in fact, there was that
determination.
I: The E/C house has all to do with topography and with the typology of the
pre-existing rural house which presented housing on the first floor whereas the ground floor was dedicated to
agricultural activities. The project tries
to use the strength of the pre-existence
There is something
very beautiful one
wants, as Zumthor
says, which is to
assume the house
as an artificial
object, but which
may appear, as
well, like it has
been there forever
and to think how a new house could
take advantage of it not seeking to invert it. We wanted to keep the ruin,
have the stone with its most authentic
character as a way to keep its beauty.
M: I never looked at that house as an
inversion of typology. If we put ourselves into a logic where we have the
models and the typologies catalogued
wed have that temptation. On the
house we are designing in Porto, the result is a five years exercise on searching
the right place to put the stairs, which
in a typical 19th century house in Porto
is a determining theme. Suddenly, you
realise that the house is simple, but the
structural project is much more complex, precisely because the stairs are
not in the place where it would be pragmatic for them to be. On the house we
are designing in Bali all the information about the place comes from a visit
where you try to understand a new reality but you cant say you know the
model or the typology of the Bali house
and that youll try to subvert it. In the
process, it may even be that it happens
but the exercise never starts there.
S: But that is what is interesting: you go
for each of the houses not by trying to
understand all the models and the various types of detached housing but
from a very concrete situation and the
work is built upon it. In parallel, there
is a theory of architecture extremely
focused on the analysis of models and
types, which doesnt look at whats specific and then cant pick a house, say the
E/C house, and think solely and exclusively from the house, without recurring to models or types, which may
serve as reference or comparison.
M: There is something very beautiful
one wants, as Zumthor says, which is to
assume the house as an artificial object, but which may appear, as well, like
it has been there forever, as the example of Comenda house by architect
Ral Lino in Serra da Arrbida,
Setbal.
Wallpaper house
Project 2011
1.5m
E/C house
Pico Island. Portugal
Completion 2013
S/R house
Bali. Indonesia
Project 2014
2m
C/Z house
Pico Island. Portugal
Completion 2011
1.5m
Detached
International
The importance of Portuguese Architecture in the Atlantic Islands a contemporary perspective
Arrbida's habitat
Five examples of detached houses / Susana Ventura + SAMI Arquitectos
Contemporary portuguese
architecture in the atlantic islands
JOS MANUEL
FERNANDES
Biblioteca de Arte - Fundao Calouste Gulbenkian
Ral Lino, Detached House known

as House in Comenda, Comenda,
Setbal 1903
The House in Comenda is built on a
promontory at the end of the Arrbidas
natural park where its beautiful green
and exuberant vegetation merges into
the green of the ocean. It is said that the
The landscape at the heart of the intimacy space (view from the top of Albarquel's fort towards Arrbida Sierra)
Third Part
On the space of
intimacy
SUSANA: In the face of the theme set
by the curator, you chose the council of
Setbal to think about the detached
house, where there seems to be, especially in Serra da Arrbida, a tradition
of detached houses, though mostly holiday housing. Nevertheless, your approach to the theme sets itself apart
from these examples, not only through
the difference you introduce to the program itself - the house becomes a permanent home - but also through your
choice for its place. What made you
choose the centre of the city of Setbal?
I: There is a very poetic charge in all the

places we chose and, for their geographical condition, these places are
preponderant in the city itself. Any
building built on these places will
It made sense
to us to develop
this idea of
intimacy,
which could be
transversal to
various scales
of the work and
which appears as
a timeless theme
S: Of the various places you mapped,

you opted for the Albarquel fort as the
place for your project. What was it that
oriented this choice?
I: The project starts with the room. It
made sense to us to develop this idea of
intimacy, which could be transversal to
various scales of the work and which
appears as a timeless theme when we
think about the house theme. We
looked to understand the genesis of the
private house in Portugal, whose oldest
examples date from the medieval palaces and it was interesting to recover
the idea of the post-chamber as a starting point for this idea of intimacy. The
medieval palaces had in their chambers, sleeping room, the most important room, preceded by the antechamber and finalised by the post-chambers,
in a succession of spaces, accessed
through each other, of increasing intimacy. We started thinking about how
we could design this space of intimacy
without developing the project of a
house. Thats where the idea of finding
an adequate pre-existence appeared,
to which we could add this post-chamber, our space of intimacy.
eduardo anahory
atelier lvaro siza vieira
Eduardo Anahory, House

in Galapos, Serra da Arrbida,
Setbal, 1961
lvaro Siza Vieira, Detached

Holiday Home, Azeito, Setbal,
1974
House in Galpagos, by Eduardo

Anahory, a Portuguese self-trained
architect, like Le Corbusier, was
a rare example of prefabricated
housing during the 60s in Portugal.
The house was built on rocky a
plateau with a prefabricated structure
and a system of panels which could
be opened or closed, expanding or
enclosing the living area and the large
balcony overlooking the sea. After
a few months of use, the architect
noticed that even if the house
sometimes faced the hard weather
and the crashing of the waves, it was
nonetheless intact. The house was
partly demolished and transformed
into a bar which burnt down in the
90s, but there in the midst of the
ruins and of the memory, one still
dreams about its reconstruction now
made possible by the justice courts.
The project dates backs to immediately

before the Portuguese Revolution of
April 1974, which may explain the
abandonment of this project by the
clients. Intended as a holiday home, the
plan presents a single-storey house with
five rooms which show the interesting
characteristic of an antechamber almost
as wide as the bedroom (a feature
that could easily convert a detached
single house into a small rural hotel).
Moreover, the plan includes several
facilities of a holiday home - swimming
pool, tennis court, and a games room at the same time it seems to re-interpret
a local type of housing (the villa). The
several apertures to the exterior, in a
multidirectional way, indicate that the
house would stand still on a plot defined
by the architect with the natural slope of
the terrain continuing from it.
level 00.pdf
07/07/14
16:41
M: In this search for making things

pertinent and turning them as real as
possible, the possibility arose for the
Albarquel fort to be transformed into a
municipal house that could have a more
intimate space for the guests that
might stay over. The pertinence of joining these two universes: the public and
the private, of being able to, actually,
build it, made us propose to the city hall
that the project was the addition of a
space of intimacy to that structure.
S: It became evident that you werent
interest in the abstract exercise of the
project of a detached house opting instead for thinking about a theme which,
in the meanwhile, became transversal
to several components of your proposal.
You started by thinking it at the scale of
the room, from which you went to the
scale of the territory. What do you expect to get from this exercise to your
current practice, if it does not get built?
I: It will be interesting to add a new
space to this building which will have
all the daily gestures not having any
specific one at the same time.
M: What I like about this exercise is
that even though we are particularly
keen on its real side, it belongs to the
Venice Biennales context where Koolhaas proposes the fundamentals: the
idea of intimacy is something fundamental to us, understanding that intimacy isnt privacy, it is something you
look for in your relationship with yourself, with the other, with cities, with the
divine. If we dont create intimacy, we
will not create depth, we will create superficiality. Our search for the fundamental is that space of intimacy.
atelier EDUARDO SOUTO MOURA
Antnio Faria
16:38
M: Its interesting this idea of being difficult to attribute a rule without understanding what is being analysed. It is as
if we could have open ended places, in
the sense that it is not possible to determine their vocation without a careful
analysis of their particularities.
change the citys landscape. By considering these places of exception we proposed to think how could they be given
back to the city through the idea of a
detached house.
A natural, geographical and historical extension of Continental

Portugal, the settling and urbanization of the North-Atlantic islands, namely of the archipelagos
of Madeira, Azores, Cape Verde
and So Tom and Prncipe, started roughly 500 years ago.
This process allowed for the
emergence, creation and consolidation of a form of architecture
that is embedded in the islands it
translated, on the one hand, the
influence of continental works
from the motherland and, on
the other, the ability to generate
distinct forms and spaces, whose
character is rooted in their striking local environments.
The so called insularity or
insular mentality materialized
itself, in Azores and Madeira
the two archipelagos that to this
day still fly the Portuguese flag
, in heightened features of religiousness, rurality and seismic
resistance.
Collectively acknowledged and
assimilated, this character has
expressed itself architecturally
in historical styles as significant
as Basaltic Manueline and
Azorean Baroque with striking contrasts created between
lime-based whitewash and the
black volcanic rock used for construction, as seen in churches
and manor houses, as well as an
intense, atavistic decorative tradition that can be traced back directly to Mainland Portugal, and
which has only been further enhanced.
Also, this character has asserted itself in highly differentiated
vernacular architectures, with
volcanic rock as its main building
material: following a reinvented,
and adapted trans-Mediterranean tradition, the insular house, of
the islanders, has been perfected
over time.
With stone walls, a tiled roof,
timber partitions, and laid-out as
geometrically regular habitats,
the design of the traditional popular house possesses great formal balance and a heightened
sense of aesthetics which can
also be seen in the 19th century
decorative Imprios (small
chapels of a popular Christian religious cult, which had a large following on the islands).
In the 20th century modernity
arrived to islands, as early as the
1930s, in the form of a new architecture with new technical and
aesthetical qualities that was immediately taken on by local authors. In the Azores, the work of
the highly talented engineer Manuel Antnio Vasconcelos (19071960, island of So Miguel) are of
significant importance, whilst in
Madeira, it is worth highlighting
works by architect Edmundo Tavares (1892-1983), such as the remarkable Farmers Market
(1940) and several neo-traditional single-family houses in Avenida do Infante (Funchal).
The 50s and 60s saw the appearance of isolated, though of
high quality, works by modern
authors such as Joo Correia Rebelo (1923-2006; Almeida Lima
house, Ribeira Grande, 1960),
Eduardo Read Teixeira (19141996, Deodato Soares house,
Ponta Delgada), both born in So
07/07/14
I: As there was this very important

premiss of working with a municipality
we set up the challenge of looking at the
city transposing the scale of the house
into the territory, believing that this
way of thinking may help to solve some
of the pending questions in our cities.
The exercise consisted in choosing,
from the various places we found together with the Setbal City Halls
staff, those that seemed the most interesting, either due to their topographical condition or its relationship with
M: Another important premiss was

that these projects should carry on beyond the Biennales timeframe. It was
hard to understand how the exercise of
building a house for a specific client,
would provide any sort of long term answer. There was a particularly interesting moment when we asked to the
Setbal City Halls staff if this poetic
and intimate look at the territory would
make sense to them. The answer was
positive, as if that tool was precisely
what was missing since the ones that
exist are not enough. There are places
which demand to be treated as if they
were a house, as if they belong to someone. Today, when we look at the city, we
feel that none of those places should be
treated as an index. The very specific
rules may have this generous size, necessary when there are uncommon conditions to solve places which are of interest to all.
paulo catrica
Architect, professor at the University

of Lisbon
There is a house in the middle of

the Ofir pine forest, forgotten
by many. It is in an advanced
state of decay, although considered a milestone in the panorama of Portuguese architecture .
Design by the portuguese architect Fernando Tvora as a vacation house and it is a clear example of the dialogue between
modern and vernacular.
Built between 1957 and 1958,
the project results (based on
Fernando Tvoras text in the
book Fernando Tvora(Blau,
1993) in a truthful composition
of several factors, such as the
family, the land, the Architect
and the traditional construction
Almost six years ago the house
had a fire that partially destroyed it. Since then it is in
need of a profound intervention. The house awaits a solution that has to come from its
owners and heirs.
Although the efforts made,
the owners are reluctant to accept public support, once it requires the house to become of
collective use, losing its private
property character.
In December 2012 the house
was classified as a Monument of
Public Interest. Still, the rating
is not enough. Ofir's House need
a deep intervention in order to
not becoming the ruins of a remarkable exemple of portuguese modern architecture.
MIGUEL: I was thinking about why the

city versus the isolated situations in the
sequence of everything weve been saying.
If Im in a more isolated situation, I have
less information, I have less references
and, because of that, the project becomes
more artificial. By bringing the project
into the centre of the city, we are giving it
more information and complexity.
the landscape and imagine where we

would place a house, so as to highlight
the places singularities. And, then, trying to understand, how we would find
a real client, for whom to develop a
house, other of the curators premisses.
client, the French Count Armand, asked

the architect Ral Lino to sleep for one
night under the moonlight on the site
before starting to design the house. This
was one of the first houses designed
by Ral Lino where his trademarks can
already be found: a respect for nature
and a careful balance between place and
architecture, nature and artifice.
Modern
forgotten:
A casa de Ofir
plantas.pdf
INS: The curator set us the challenge

of designing a detached house, in a natural context, for a client who we should
ideally find, working in collaboration
with a municipality. It seemed interesting to identify our object of study and
place it in context with the following
question: Is there a place in the cities
for a detached house, permanently inhabited, strongly related to the landscape, drawn by an architect in close
connection with a specific client?. We
chose the city of Setbal for its relationship with its surroundings: the Serra da
Arrbida, the Sado river and estuary.
We then went looking for sites, within
the city limits, in which it would be possible to design a detached house and we
found places that, either for their difficulty of access, or for the pre-existences, or for its topography, are still empty.
We identified these places and we
looked to register them in a Map of
Places of Intimacy(Homeland - News
from Portugal #1) designed with the architect Brbara Maes, and depicted
in Paulo Catricas photographs.
atelier AIRES MATEUS
Eduardo Souto de Moura,

House in the Serra da Arrbida,
Serra da Arrbida, Setbal,
1994-2002
Aires Mateus, House in the

Arrbida Natural Park, Arrbida
Natural Park, Setbal, 2002
Souto de Moura explains this

house making use of a quotation by
Edgar Morin When reality resists
simplification, we must turn to
complexity. Complexity is the breaking
of the disorder of randomness and
uncertainty in the reality Although
apparently complex in form with its
many different volumes, each one
devoted to a different function or
use, the gesture which gave birth to
the house is simple and immediately
perceptible when one understands
the topography and the surrounding
landscape. The entrance is at the top
of the hill, through an exterior patio
where one descends to enter into the
house. Inside, the different rooms vary
in their proportions to pursue the light
and the beautiful landscape until the
end of the horizon where the sea lies.
In the architects own words, the project

is a response to its mineral context,
sticking out as something tectonic
of natural concrete anchored in the
orography of the mountain where
the existing pinewood punctuates
the inner patios of the house, bushy
vegetation is prolonged by the slope
towards its interior and moss covers
the concrete walls, just as it covers
the stones around the terrain. There
isnt a better description of the actual
state of the house than these words
which seem to be premonitory. The
construction stopped a few years
ago becoming a contemporary ruin
of flat horizontal concrete slabs. The
vegetation invaded the house, melting
it into the surrounding landscape just
as the architects had predicted for the
real house.
Furnas Lake Villas Ana janeiro
Miguel, and Raul Choro Ramalho (1914-2002) in Madeira (Social Security complex, Funchal,
1963-72).
In these works, the important
use of volcanic rock and the luminous use of lime-based whitewashed surfaces, is interpreted
and reinvented within a modern
geometry, anchored in with the
use of reinforced concrete and in
a dialogue with the transparency
of glazing and the colourful, organic textures of wood.
It was only after Portugal became a democracy (1974-76), that
the Atlantic islands saw an intense influx of functional building renewal, both infrastructural and architectural.
The cities on the Islands developed considerably and a large
number of authors emerged, either native or locally established
and working on the islands, of
which we can name a few (without prejudice to many others),
who have been very active especially since the 1980s-90s.
In their works one never loses
sight of the importance of the islands landscape, a kind of longing for the land that harks back
to the rural, but is neither antiquated nor backward-looking
rather, it morphed poetically and
attuned to a keen sense of modernity, often experimental and imbued with the famed genius loci.
These are often delicate and sensitive works, sometimes with an
almost craftsman-like approach
Gruta das Torres Ana Janeiro
that can be found in their love of

detail and the pursuit of an appropriate scale and integration.
Joo Maia Macedo (b.1948;
Canto da Fontinha building,
c.1985; Casa da Vigia house, S. Vicente Ferreira, c. 2008, So
Miguel) is an author devoted to
So Miguel (working with architect Manuela Braga); Pedro Maurcio Borges (b.1963) designed single-family houses that show great
understanding of morphology
and context, such as the Pacheco
de Melo house (1992-2001, S. Vi-
cente Ferreira, So Miguel), winner of the SECIL Award, Portugals highest distinction in architecture - bringing to the fore of
public discussion the importance
of the islands architecture.
The most coherent and complete body of work by an insular
author is undoubtedly that of Paulo Gouveia (1939-2009) who, in an
intelligent and sensitive reinterpretation of the islands architecture, combined materials and formal systems, American and European influences, to launch a per-
sonalized and critical vernacular, imagining the architecture

of travel and adventure to produce designs such as the Whalers
Museum in Pico Island.
The work of Paulo David in Madeira is also inspiring (Casa das
Mudas arts centre, Calheta,
2003-2004).
Other younger authors, either
Azorean or who have settled on
the island, have also carried out
noteworthy works, for a variety
of different types of buildings;
amongst the architects from Madeira, works by Joo Favila Meneses (Casa Branca Hotel, 199498) or Joo Goes Ferreira (Roberto Ivens school, Ponta Delgada,
2001-2006, with Tiago Correia),
to name but two, should also not
go unmentioned.
In the Azores, we notice works
by Fernando Monteiro (Alabote
Restaurant, Ribeira Grande,
1998-2001, a white structure set
atop a basalt wall overlooking the
ocean; Furnas Lake Villas, boxlike units built for tourists in
cryptomeria wood and set in the
volcanic crater of Lagoa das Furnas, 2003-2004, with Lus
Almeida e Sousa), by Ana Veloso
(Horta Library and Archive,
2008) or by Rui Pinto (CasaMemria Manuel de Arriaga cultural centre, Horta, Faial Island,
2012, with Teresa Robalo).
Deeply in tune with its setting, flourishing and intense,
the architecture of the islands
both attracts and delights us!
Modern
recover: Casa
das Marinhas
Built between 1954 and 1957,
Casa das Marinhas is a project
by the portuguese architect Viana de Lima and it could be seen
as the equivalent as the manorhouse of modern times. The
house design seaks for the minimum with the dialogue of various volumetric unities, one of
them is an old windmill, absorved by the plastic and constructiv composition of the project.
There is a clear influence of the
modern thinking in the house
spacial organization.
In 2013 the house re-opened
as a museum, after being recovered. Now it is possible to visit it
by app oi nt me nt , c a l l i ng
(00351)253960100 or sending
an e-mail to museu.municipal@
cm-esposende.pt
Esposende city council and
University of Porto created the
Viana de Lima prize. Over 30
years, the 2000 euro prize will
be given to the two best Fine
Arts and Architecture students.
Antnio Faria
Rural
Rural
Without agriculture, its raison d'tre, there is no rural world
Numbers
Towards a new rural model? 32%

Of GDP
Weight of the agricultural sector in the

Portuguese economy in the 1950s.
2%
PEDRO CLARKE
Traditionally, in a rural setting a house
was more than a home, it was part of a
way of life. A place to rest, sleep, and (occasionally) receive guests, many of the
rural houses doubled up as workshops
for artisans, small scale granaries,
stores, animal pens, or as any other
function that might have been required.
As Elisabete Figueiredo once commented, in imagine theres no rural,
the agricultural condition, the raison
dtre of the rural world now seems to
be lost. In this new globalised world,
where the food we eat is now often
shipped for over 10,000km (and some
of the food that is produced locally never makes it onto the market), this raison dtre has all but disappeared.
Portugal has seen a steady decline its
rural-agricultural population, whilst in
1989 approximately 2 million people
were engaged in the sector, today that
population does not even add up to
800,000. The overall contribution of
what was once a key sector of our economy has also dropped substantially,
from 32% (in the 1950s) to a mere 2% of
GDP. So what to do? what is the role of
architecture in this scenario?
Parts of the country, and large parts Old Sacor Service Station, vora David Freitas 1950-1969 / Property: Arquivo Fotogrfico CME
of the Alentejo in particular, have
adapted to this new condition, delicatessen cheese and wine producmontes a traditional type of house tion (Portugals products would hardly
from this part of Portugal have been find it hard to compete in those marconverted to holiday homes, stretches kets), but again would such a change
of landscape have been designated as benefit more than the wealthier (largeProtected Areas, destined to be left ly urban) middle classes , and their
empty (and unproductive) during large cravings for organic wine, stone
parts of the year, or maybe occupied by backed bread, and whatever other local
the occasional tourist from Northern luxuries they can now afford.
A real return to rural housing, needs
Europe in search of those late October
(or early April) rays of sun... If we have to go further than a superficial apan ageing population, a deteriorating proach to what the countryside can ofbuilding stock, and a confused view as fer, it needs to go deeper than simply
to whether we should preserve or re- looking at what can be converted and
form our environment, then does it reoccupied for leisure. New rural housmake any sense to still talk about rural ing needs to consider what is available,
housing? The countryside is empty, cit- what was there before, what are the
ies are full. Long live the city!?
needs of the populations that are still
Despite this grim picture, trends to- there and what will be our future needs
wards more sustainable and fair be, and architects are well placed to
trade practices could see this region play a key role in this.
spect for the rural world, but as the reembark on a journey towards a new
Admittedly without the creation of habilitation project of the Granary in
rural model, possibly not unlike what new jobs (in the agricultural sector?) vora is trying to do, the creation of
has happened in other parts of South- there will no reversal of rural exodus, new (cultural and other) infrastrucern Europe, with boutique farms and architectural deterioration and disre- tures, can help with slowing this pro-
If we don't
know whether
to preserve
or reform our
environment,
does it make
any sense to
still talk about
rural housing?
OF GDP
Weight of the agricultural sector in the

Portuguese economy in 2012.
7.75bn
Earmarked for the Rural
Development Programme
of Continental Portugal for 2014-2020.

This Proposal was submitted 5th of
May 2014 for approval. Of this
sum 3.58bn come from European
FEADER funding.
source: Fernando Oliveira Baptista. A agricultura e a questo

da terra do Estado Novo Comunidade Europeia. 1994 / GPP
Programa de Desenvolvimento Rural 2014-2020. Documento
Orientao. Maio 2012 / GPP Programa de Desenvolvimento Rural
2014-2020. PDR 2020.
cess down and who knows it might even

help with attracting new dwellers from
elsewhere.
The artists studios being created,
provide nowhere near the numbers of
new homes needed, for existing or new
rural dwellers, but they are an example
of how housing and production can
once more be sewn back together. Unlike in (larger) cities, in a rural (or quasi rural) environment, space is less of a
problem (urban sprawl beware, this is
not what we are talking about) and livelihoods can be planned in and around
a homestead. Like the great estates
that once populated this part of the
country (of which the Barahona Palace
was part of), or even like the small holdings of family farming, a way of life can
once more be constructed around the
structures that we have inherited.
With all this in mind, planners, architects, politicians and developers should
probably start thinking about re-investing in housing in a rural setting.
This could be done in one of two ways,

for those that find it hard to accept that
we live in an ever changing world, and
that will not accept that the traditional
model of the city will also need to
change, new rural housing could be
seen as counter-balance to the city, (a
place of respite, to which one can escape following a hard day at the office,
accessible by faster transport, telecommunications and enjoying a closer relationship to nature), or for those with a
more (modern) open mind, maybe they
can start to look at it as a new kind of
place, not quite urban, definitely not
suburban, and yet not really rural any
more (lest we forget that without agriculture, its raison dtre, there is no
rural world), where there is still the
space for small (and large) businesses
to rethink how they occupy the land
and structures that have been left behind and/or create new (hybrid) spaces
where a better work/life balance might
be possible.
miguel marcelino
The architecture project is at the same time the structural rehabilitation project
Transformation plans
miguel marcelino
Sowing the seeds for a change

Progress so far...
Since the start of this process our two prong
approach, to discussing and dealing with the
changes in the rural world and their implications
on housing, has been driven by the desire to do
more than a simple superficial lick of paint type
of solution. We have tried to move towards a
deeper understanding of the issues involved, and
are looking for solutions that might help address
the root causes of the problem abandoned
fields, empty structures, loss of jobs, loss of
identity and a need for new uses. We debated,
at long length, the meaning of these changes,
questioning ourselves about whether to focus
on small or large structures, buildings already
inhabited or uninhabited spaces, weve invited
local people to tell us there story and join this
debate, exploring a theme and trying to address
issues that go beyond housing, beyond the
Alentejo, beyond Portugal, and possibly even
beyond Europe.
In this process of ideas, options and solutions,
to be able to re-brand a once agricultural
landscape, the Alentejo, as a cultural landscape,
a fertile ground for the discussion of ideas,
production and new ways of going about doing
things in a post agro-rural world, appeared to us
as an interesting challenge, a way of securing
new uses for the land and assisting with the

re-population of this territory (without activity,
jobs and people, there will be no housing). Key to
achieving any of
this has been the
ongoing dialogue
the city of vora,
the district capital
of the region,
Million euros
Initial budget for Granary
and following
revamp
discussions
with the district
councillors,
Miguel Marcelino
embarked on
the design of
Maximum Co-Financing
the project to
of project through EU funding
refurbish the
framework
old agricultural
granary into a Cultural Granary.
In fairness, this project is not trying to create
something new or foreign to this context,
instead it is building on what was already there,
coming up with a solution for a failing building,
and supporting a series of local groups and
initiatives interested in maintaining the traditions
of the Alentejo alive the Granary has for some
years now been home to a diverse group of
2-3
95%
Miguel Marcelino
cultural associations interested in anything from

Alentejos cuisine, to poetry, to traditional song
(the Cantares) or to theatre.
The Granary Revamp project, as previously
explained, involves the creation of a new hybrid
structure and space, creating a bond between
old and new. Existing uses, will be improved
and new uses, for the building, will be created
artist/studio residences (housing in a one
of its many new guises) which it is hoped
will bring further development to this (now)
dormant quarter of town, and assist with the
transformation of it into a dynamic 24-hour
inhabited hub.
So whats next?
The project has now been presented to the city
the councillors received it well, happy to see a
modern scheme that respects the citys heritage
and it will be on display at the Traditional
(city/village) Ftes of S. Joo, held in late June,
exhibited side by side with photographs of the
past and present of the region, inviting people to
consider what the future might hold.
For any works to start, for the project to really
gain life, and for it to stand a chance of really
making a difference not much is need. The
project is ready, the architect has done part of
his work, but as usual it is money seems to be

the problem. The costs of such a project have
been estimated
at something in
the region of 2 to
3million euros, a
large sum for
an already
indebted region
following years
of challenges
like many local
authorities vora
Funding needed
is saddled with a
if a proposal for EU funding for
public debt that
this project is accepted
prevents it from
being able to
invest as theyd like in a project like this one.
Despite this, there might still be a solution, a
special frameworks set up by Europe, for cofinancing investments in indebted countries, may
prove the way forwards. With an opportunities
for co-funding of the project up to 90-95%, the
local contribution could be as little as 100-200k
euros, an investment that no longer seems like
such a daunting prospect. Can we then capitalise
on this process, use the resources that are
available, and materialize this project?
100200k
This Granary Building, now an obsolete agricultural structure, is a centenary building with serious structural issues. Its exterior is relatively
unremarkable compared to the interior, which a system of vaults and
arches make very expressive and spatially rich.
The proposal starts with the premise
to change as little as possible the interior, only the bare minimum to allow for the modernization and reprogramming of the space as an artists
residence and cultural cluster.
From the outside a profound intervention, that will also act as the
structural rehabilitation, is proposed: all the faade is to be wrapped
in a new concrete envelope bonded to
the existing walls, forming a new
composite structure. This is not a
new wall supporting the old one, nor
the other way around. The new concrete shell will be pigmented and textured to have a rough finish and colour, which creates a subtle dialogue
with the granite stonework of the historic center. Finally, this intervention
also finds a way to seal and protect
the building, while creating a new image that is neither a break with the
past nor uncritical continuity.
Granary Cronology
Late XIX Century
Construction of the Barahona Palace
and Granary buildings.
Middle XX Century
Granary building is taken over by the
Public Company of Cereals (EPAC).
1964
Repair works on the roof.
1981
Repair works to render, plastering,
whitewash and windows.
2010
Project for structural stabilization.
January 2014
Start of the new architecture project
to rehabilitate the whole building.
February 2014
Meeting with local authorities and
resident cultural associations to
define the brief.
April 2014
Sketch design is completed
1997
Building is taken over by the
Municipality of vora.
6th June 2014

Project is presented at the Venice
Biennale of Architecture
1998
Building is occupied by cultural
organizations.
13th June 2014

Project is presented at the InterMunicipal Community (CIMAC)
conferences on culture and public
space.
1998
Report by the National Laboratory for
Civil Engineering (LNEC) on structural
issues.
1999
Geotechnical scan and survey.
2000
Works to underpin foundations.
24th June 2014

On-site exhibition and public
presentation of the project
next
Application for EU funding to allow
the project and construction to go
ahead
Rural
Territory
033_Plantas.pdf
16:44
11/07/14
07/07/14
033_Plantas.pdf
033_Reabilitacao.pdf
he transition period in which

we live forces us to reconsider what is the best way the
most effective, most ecological, most economical and
most intelligent way to ensure the survival of cities and
their heritage. Crises make
us look differently at the available resources, leading to an evaluation according to renewed criteria. This is the
case with the historical, consolidated
areas of cities, making way for new
outlooks on design processes. Given
that our time has accelerated, and that
the phenomenon of globalization together with new technologies has rendered obsolete many of the concepts
we had until recently held as stable
and valid, many certainties have gone
up in smoke and transformed themselves into opportunities to explore
the challenges we are currently facing.
Culture, economy and the idea of human development for the 21st century
have inevitably become the interdependent ingredients of this task. The
number of references expands, reaching the most distant places, as stereotyped images travel the globalized,
networked world. A reality sedimented throughout hundreds of years can
now be updated and modified in its
symbolic value in a very short period
of time. The consolidated city is affected by this uneven pace that is as inevitable as it is urgent. Urban identities
can only be looked at in a fleeting manner, as opposed to a stereotyped vision
that reduces them to a collection of
more or less well-preserved typologies; the urban reality is far more complex than it appears to be. Furthermore, if the nature of architecture and
of the city is a transformative one, urban identities are likewise in permanent mutation. It is at this improbable
intersection, between change and permanence, that we are able to differentiate between places, always framed
by new mind-sets and values that
change with each generation. In the
paced process of recycling sites and
cities there is a slow, gradual regeneration, an occupation of interstitial
spaces, the creation of new connections, processes of repair and reuse,
and new solutions for mobility. This
continuous regeneration contributes
to the preservation of both structures
and identities. Urban recycling becomes the most coherent form of operating given the desire to maintain
and strengthen the spirit of places; of
opening up the opportunity for the
creation of new environments that
translate other ways of inhabiting and
appropriating spaces, with projects
that respond to current needs, with
new types of programmes and new
mind-sets. The contemporary approach should bring to light all the
knowledge which is relevant to solving
current problems, insofar as they
prove useful to nourish an urban and
architectural design that takes into
consideration the rights and well-being
of individuals and the community, both
in the present time and for the future.
16:44
Visiting Professor at the

Department of Architecture of
Universidade Autnoma de Lisboa
07/07/14
MANUEL LACERDA
Turning a Wheat Granary into a a Cultural Granary: different uses and spaces for a centenary building
being brought into the 21st century
033_Reabilitacao.pdf
Neither a break with the past

nor uncritical continuity
In between
memory and
creation
LVARO DOMINGUES
Geographer, researcher and professor

at the Faculty of Architecture,
University of Porto
11:41
23/06/14
15:28
033_Cortes.pdf
We want the same kind of freedom the city man enjoys; save us
from the soot of the old fireplace, a sign of our primitive
condition: our fire-seared faces,
backs frozen from the houses
damp; we want radiators and we
will kill anyone who comes
around talking nonsense about
the love of the picturesque countryside or babbling on poetically
about our fireplaces of yore and
quiet afternoons by the hearth,
without knowing the first thing
about it! We want houses on pilotis. Yes! Because we have lived
far too long with our feet stuck
in the mud and the muck, far too
long have we lived with packed
dirt floors that afflict us with
rheumatism. Give us windows,
wide windows, so we can let the
sun into our house. Take the
muck away from our table. Give
us the means to be clean and
healthy like city folk
Very much in the style of Le
Corbusiers utopian modernism,
here is the hygienic, rational,
modern solution to end old agriculture; a solution on pilotis, of
course, inverting and radicalising the very condition of the
farmer as someone who tends
the land with his hands and his
feet deep in it. There is nothing
left of the meaningful poetry of
the peasants primitive condition in this account: nor of the
farmer as a good savage (after
Rousseau); nor of the mythical
country folk who Jules Michelet,
some decades after Rousseau,
would celebrate as a near-supernatural entity, untouched by the
coarseness or deprivation of
their humble material condition; nor of the German romanticism of J.G. Herder who
praised the simplicity, generosity and truth of the volkgeist as
the essential quality of a people
and genuine cultural reference,
as opposed to the learned, refined, overwrought and artificial cultural model inherited
from French Illuminism.
Corbusiers whole discourse
sits in stark opposition to the
idea of discovering the people
This is me, the goat

This one over here in the foreground is me, the goat. The pasture
is rubbish and I am pregnant. I know its not prudent at times
like these but such is life. He rammed me, the bastard. Life is a
sheepish business. Those nine sheep over there are as foolish as I
am; they talked me into buying one of those row houses because
the sheepfold was all mucky and when it rains you cant stand out
in the pasture because of the damp and rheumatoid arthritis. It all
started well enough. The houses were lovely, close to the pasture
and with views out into the countryside. The landscape project for
the external spaces is top-notch: dry stone walls, re-used props
http://www.revistapunkto.com/2014/05/englishhomelessness-and-nostalgia-for.html
Enquiring after the use and addressees of the nostalgic discourse about land, biological
agriculture, the new rurals, rural tourism and other ruralities
The rural was green; a goat

came and ate it
1
11/07/14
11:40
Rather, let
us enquire
after the
use and
addressees
of the nostalgic
discourse
about
ruralities
associated with the ideological
construction of nationalisms
and growingly exacerbated nationalist identities during the
19th century, the so called
primitivism ( seen as the
closeness to nature and scarce
contact with scholarly education and knowledge), with communitarism (as collective,
shared creation, not centred on
the individual, as in high culture
circles) and purism (a trait of
peasants who, immerse in nature, were less influenced by
from a metaphysical vineyard; gravel pathways and plenty of

(low-growing) greenery .
The houses were never finished; they transitioned directly to the
state of vandalism. They are all dried up, reduced to bare concrete,
no frames, no windows, no sanitary-ware and even the electrical
wiring was taken by the metal gang.
The bank auctioned off the houses. They were all bought by a
German musician who says that one painted white and the other
black will make for a fine keyboard. It looks like our house is going
to be an F-sharp. There are plenty of other notes but the overall
tone is pretty somber.
Herd in the city lvaro domingues
"We want houses on pilotis because we have lived far too long with our feet stuck in the mud and the muck" lvaro domingues
cosmopolitan cultures and closer to the ancient traditions of

their social groups of belonging
and respective territories).
Genius loci expresses this
mystic collision and confluence
of land, language, tradition,
identity, spontaneity, authenticity, the root,. the soul of a people, in short, peasants. In
French, the meaning of words
such as pays, paysan, paysage,
demonstrate the association between geographic identity

(pays), socio-cultural condition
(paysan) and territory of belonging (paysage). Peasants would be
the gardeners of the landscape,
in the words of Alain Roger to
talk about the artialization of
landscape, its aesthetisation
and manipulation as a devise for
engendering mythologies about
farming land and peasants.
Breaking with this type of fictional and factual construction

of rurality, modernity constructs its own utopia of the future, free from the past and
founded in the new spirit of relentless progress.
Naturally, the peasant stood
as a figure of the past, of coarseness and of the obscure, of the
magical world of the natural
and supernatural. It was neces-
sary to polish this rustic roughness, to recycle the peasant into

a condition of businessmanagronomist, mechanized and
marketed.
Meanwhile, mass methods resulting from modernized farming universality, rationality,
homologation - would at the
same time cause diverse and
contradictory reasonings: a new
mythology of clean-tech (formu-
lated nowadays as eco-tech, following the triumphant appearance of environmental mystification); a succession of disasters
caused by the unexpected effects of transgenics and the manipulation of synthetic nature
and, an overwhelming sense of
disenchantment over what Max
Weber understood to be the enchanted world of pre-modern
societies, now stuck inside a cybernetic cage of modern rationality, with its narrow views of
the technologic, scientific, capitalist world - in a word, a world
stripped clean of magic.
Anti-modern bitterness would
bring all of this together in a vast
wave of nostalgia for the return
to the (elysian) fields. The seaside garden of Europe that Portugal was in the rhetoric of Estado Novo propaganda has underwent brutal changes and accelerations over the last 40 or 50
years. Driven by famine and
poor living conditions, peasants
emigrated; some have ended up
returning, but nowadays Portugal is a country of old folk and
depopulation is advancing at a
fast pace.
The marks and memories of
that Rural Portugal are gradually falling apart with deruralization and the collateral effects
left in its wake: depopulation,
ageing population, fields and agricultural production being increasingly abandoned, the disappearance of certain ways of
life, know-how and cultural
practices the interior, as these
things are usually referred to.
The few that endure live off an
assisted economy of pensions,
retirement pensions, savings or
money sent by family members
and those who can leave, as jobs
are scarce and the mirage of a
bucolic existence and lost paradises belong to outsiders who
think nature and the rural are
places for holidays and tourism.
There is no way of finding a future for the mythified past of a
country of poor but honest farmers. Their gardeners lost, the rural landscapes of old Portugal
entered a cycle of profound metamorphosis where most people
can only see deterioration and
ugliness. Not even (hyper)modernized landscapes of intensive
farming escape this disenchantment: they are dull, aseptic, synthetic-looking and, it is suspected, poisoned; in addition to that,
they generate very little and
very poorly paid employment.
There are cases of individuals
being recruited in Thailand to
work here for less than 500 Euros a month.
Given the flurry of sound bites
and verbal excess this subject invites, it doesnt matter so much
to ask what rurality, post-rurality or other fictions, are. Rather,
let us enquire after the use and
addressees of the nostalgic discourse about land, biological agriculture (is there any that isnt,
with the exception of Facebooks
electronic FarmVille?), the new
rurals, rural tourism and other
ruralities.
In the beginning, agricultural
production was meant to feed
people; afterwards, bread and
wine, milk and honey also became the food of the gods. Now
everything is a market and in
Brazilian Portuguese, agriculture is called agro-business and
produces green energy. So much
rhetoric!
Also the rural was once
green: then along came a goat
and ate it!
Theater & Cinema
jos capela
Over the last 30 years, Portuguese architecture has known
many leading figures whose recognition also extends internationally. It is said that this phenomenon is associated with the
materialization of a specifically
Portuguese architectural identity. The quality of each architects work intensifies the collective phenomenon and the recognition of the collectives quality
creates a framework for the recognition of each individual. I am
not going to discuss here how
that identity is defined nor the
concept of identity itself. Instead, I'm interested in noting
that, at the basis of this phenomenon lies a Portuguese cultural and architectural context
where authorship is aspired to
and appreciated. This seems to
me like a good starting point to
address Portuguese theatre.
In Portugal, the so-called independent theatre has an unusual quantitative relevance (beyond the qualitative one). Although there is some theatre for
the masses, produced for commercial and recreational purposes and whose popularity is
strongly stems from the presence of television actors, most
theatre made in Portugal is authorial theatre.
It is harder to identify a common denominator in the work
produced by Portuguese thea-
Scenery of HAMLET by Jos Capela (mala voadora, Jorge Andrade direction,

text by William Shakespeare, So Luiz, 2014) Jos Carlos duarte
Scenery of CASA & JARDIM HOUSE & GARDEN by Jos Capela (mala voadora,
Jorge Andrade direction, text by Chris Thorpe, CCB, 2012) Jos Carlos duarte
transformed (leftover cork agglomerate wall coverings are

painted blue to resemble a map).
After a while and with every
new staging, chances that the
audience will not recognize the
space are slim to none. To maintain unpredictability, new spaces were built with the appearance of having been found just
like that. The audience accepted as genuine (the building)
what was in fact false (the set) at

a time when, due to force of habit by Artistas Unidos, the genuine (the building) was taken for
false (the set). All of this pertains to sets something for
which the realist convention determines that false (the set)
should be taken for genuine!
For many years, Mnica Calle
had her Casa Conveniente in a
former club in Cais do Sodr a
bohemian area in Lisbon. Responsible not only for the shows
direction but also for its scenography and lighting, Calle has invented a nocturnal scenic atmosphere. Oblivious to aggrandizing resources that are dependent on large infra-structural
means, Calle has grown accustomed to using light or the absence of light as a delicate matter: lighting just narrow sections
of the shows in an overall dark
atmosphere, a little like the
paintings of Rembrandt. In addition to using simple household
light bulbs, Calle covers the
bulbs in cinefoil, thus limiting
the emission of light in both direction and intensity. Calle takes
these atmospheres with her
when she occupies conventional
performance venues, adapting
the resources at her disposal as
well as this very lyricism.
A few years ago, Teatro Pragra defined their work as a cross
between philosophy and MTV.
More than sets, their acting
spaces are images inside which
the performances take place like in a studio video-clip. And,
just like in a video-clip, they
have a graphic seduction power: shapes clearly outlined
against a smooth background
(the white box is a recurring feature); strong or luminous colours in vibrant contrasts; coexisting elements that keep their
autonomy while creating, in relation to each other, the heteroclite effect of a collage; verbal elements (the letterification inaugurated by Piscator and Brecht).
Nothing in Portuguese theatre
was ever this glossy.
Arquiteturas Film Festival

An international film festival exclusively dedicated to screening experimental, fiction
and documentary films about architecture, presenting a moving image perspective
on Portuguese and international architectural projects will be held from 24th
to 28th of September in Lisbon, Cinema City Alvalade, Cinemateca Portuguesa.
The Wounded Brick

Sue-Alice Okukubo e Eduard
Zorzenoni, Italy/Germany
(2013) 86
A cinematic documentary
essay on the visions, hopes
and failures while searching for humane housing in
the face of economic and
political interest. Filmmakers Sue-Alice Okukubo and Eduard Zorzenoni
encounter architects, urban planners, sociologists
and victims of the 2009
earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy. Interviews that merge
associatively into a poetic
reflection on: Who owns
the city?What does housing mean?
Screened at Arquiteturas
Film Festival 2013
thewoundedbrickfilm.com
Away from
All Suns
Isa Willinger, Germany,
(2013) 77
In the back alleys of Moscow, forgotten treasures

lurk: Utopian Constructivist buildings from the
1920s. Ruins of another future, filled with revolution
and hope. The film follows
three Muscovites who are
struggling with the buildings heritage. A dialogue
between past and present
unfolds. Manifestos by
Rodchenko, Lissitzky and
Vesnin, and documentary
footage from early Soviet
film, among others by Dziga Vertov, evoke the vision
of modernity. A journey
through time to the revolutionary 1920s and back to
Russia today.
Screening at Arquiteturas
Film Festival 2014
awayfromallsuns.de
Travel
On the topic of
theatre in Portugal:
3 examples of
scenography
tre companies than in the work
of Portuguese architects. Architecture gravitates around relatively univocal references. The
fabric of theatre is far more plural. Contrasts between generations are more plainly visible.
Artistic families are more contrasting. The audience is offered theatrical events with
very diverse atmospheres. But
most of all, there is a common
ambition of elevating these
events to the status of authorial
works or, possibly, art works.
I have worked as a scenographer for 10 years, mostly in the
company I am part of - mala
voadora but here I would like
to talk about my favourite examples of Portuguese scenography, with the clear advantage of
not having to speak about my
own work (synthesized in the
images). Among the very many
cases I could take into consideration, I will refer three: the
work of Rita Lopes Alves at A
Capital, the work of Mnica
Calle at Casa Conveniente and
Teatro Praga.
Rita Lopes Alves is the scenographer for Artistas Unidos, the
company directed by Jorge Silva
Melo. During the time this company occupied the former headquarters of A Capital newspaper,
the elements the building was
made of were used as scenographic matter, like in a readymade.
They could be: just used (a door is
a door), fictionalized (the small
door of a broom-closet under the
stairs becomes a bar cabinet) or
Following the Portuguese theme of housing for this years biennial, the director of
the Arquiteturas Film Festival, Sofia Mourato gives out her six best films on housing,
some screened in the festival last year and others expected for this years edition.
Follow the festival in www.arquiteturasfilmfestival.com.
Microtopia
Drop city
Men Made Place
Agoraphobia
Jesper Wachtmeister,
Denmark (2013) 52
Joan Grossman, USA

(2012) 82'
Yu Shen Su, Taiwan/Germany

(2012) 53
Imre Azem, Turkey/The

Netherlands (2013) 53
How would you feel about

carrying your home in
your pocket or having
clothes to live in? For most
of us, house means stability, structure, and permanence. In an age of increasing population and
technological gains, todays mobile society has
resulted in a demand, or
perhaps a dream, for portable dwellings and dwellings in new settings and
situations.Microtopia explores how architects, artists and ordinary problemsolvers are pushing the
limits to find answers to
their dreams of portability, flexibility and of creating independence from
the grid.
Drop Citys dazzling structures were based on Buckminster Fullers geodesic

domes and the crystalline
designs of Steve Baer, a pioneer in geometric structure and solar energy. Low
cost domes, made from
salvaged materials culled
lumber, bottle caps and
chopped-out car tops, became a lab for experimental building, attracting international attention and
inspiring a generation of
alternative communities.
But the flood of attention
led to overcrowding, and
the community was eventually abandoned to transients. By 1973, Drop City
had become the worlds
first geodesic ghost town.
The experimental documentary Man Made Place

shows through impressive
images how two certain
cities and the relation of
inhabitants to these cities
are developing in China
in times of urban growth.
Yumen a derelict ghost
town and Kangbashi a
mythic city of the future,
both are deserted. They
exist because of completely different reasons.
In October 2012, following

extensive research, an international team of architects, urban planners and
asmall film crew spent five
days in Turkey, studying
the urban transformation
process in three cities:
Ankara, Bursa and Istanbul. This is their story.
Film Festival 2014
solarisfilm.se /portfolio/
microtopia/
Film Festival 2013
dropcitydoc.com
7thart.com
homeland
News from Portugal , August 2014

COMMISSIONING BODIES
Secretary of State for Culture

Jorge Barreto Xavier
Director-General for the Arts
Samuel Rego
The Directorate-General for the Arts
Mnica Guerreiro, Mnica Antunes
Mnica Oliveira, Costanza Ronchetti
Margarida Silva, Susana Neves
Curator
Pedro Campos Costa
COLOPHON
Editorial Director:
Alessia Allegri
Authors:
Adoc, Andr Tavares, architect editor
Artria, Ateliermob, architect editor
Like Architects, Mariana Pestana, architect
editor, Miguel Eufrsia, architect editor,
Miguel Marcelino, Paulo Moreira, Pedro Clarke,
architect editor, Sami Arquitectos
Susana Ventura, architect editor
Contributors
lvaro Domingues, Gonalo Loureno,
Herbert Wright, Joo Baa, Joo Lus Ferreira,
Jos Aguiar, Jos Capela, Jos Manuel,
Fernandes, Manuel Lacerda, Miguel Reimo
Costa, Pedro Bandeira Pedro Costa, Sofia
Mourato, Vitor Ribeiro
Copy-editors
Antnio Faria, Carolina Sumares, Joana Coutinho,
Joana Oliveira, Joo Simes, Marta Onofre, Pedro
Silva, Pedro Vicente, Sara Neves, Zara Ferreira
Translation
Rute Paredes
Revision-Edition
Pedro Clarke
Graphic Design
Silvadesigners
Illustration
Ana Arago, Armanda Vilar, Vasco Mouro
3D Visualization
Vrtual
Legal Support
Tiago Piscarreta
Photographers
Ana Janeiro, Andr Pais, Catarina Ribeiro,
Denis DTA, Fernando Guerra, Hazul, Jos Carlos
Duarte, Paulo Catrica, Rui Morais de Sousa,
Rui Pinheiro, Valter Vinagre
Back cover
Friendly Fire
PRODUCTION
Lisbon Architecture Triennale
President
Jos Mateus
Deputy director
Manuel Henriques
Production
Isabel Antunes, head, Liliana Lino,
Ins Marques, Veronica Bastai
Fundraising and Partnerships
Sara Battesti
Management Assistant
Helena Soares
Communication and Press
Maria Schiappa
Local Communication
and Production Support
Studioquotazero: Daniele Vicentini and
Paolo Franzo
Board
Jos Mateus, Chairman, Nuno Sampaio,
Vice-chairman, Jos Manuel dos Santos, Member
Maria Dalila Rodrigues, Member,
Pedro Arajo e S, Member
INSTITUCIONAL PARTNERSHIPS
Municipality of vora, Municipality of Lisboa
Municipality of Loures, Municipality
of Matosinhos, Municipality of Porto,
Municipality of Setbal
Acknowledgments
Pedro Campos Costa and the Lisbon
Architecture Triennale would like to extend
a special thanks to all the organizations and
people who have contributed to this project:
Ana Ribeiro da Silva, lvaro Siza Vieira,
Benjamin Pereira, Bernardo Tvora,
Carlos Castanheira, Diogo Lino Pimentel, Eduardo
Souto de Moura, Fernando Bagulho, Gonalo Byrne,
Jos Gigante, Manuel Aires Mateus, Miguel Judas,
Paulo Guerreiro, Pedro Carvalho, Sara Anahory,
Sara Eloy, Srgio Fernandez, Arquivo Fotogrfico
de vora, Elsa Machado e Carlos Pinto, Cmara
Municipal de Esposende, Catarina Ribeiro, Casa da
Arquitectura, Cristina Abreu e Manuel Jos Simas,
Centro de Documentao 25 de Abril, Antnio Reis,
Benjamim Pereira, Ribeiro da Silva, FG+SG
Fotografia de Arquitectura, Fundao Calouste
Gulbenkian, Fundao Instituto Marques da Silva,
Hazul, Paulo Cunha e Silva, Sandra Figueira e Rui
Oliveira, Vitrio Leite
The partners, sponsors and supporters of
this project and the contributors to this
editorial project
Film Festival 2014
vimeo.com/69409703
Film Festival 2013
PARTNER:
PRINTing SUPPORT:
sponsors:
The Casa Adropeixe by Carlos Castanheira is 60m above a lake FG + SG Fotografia de Arquitectura
House Rules
Portugal's house architecture is unique. London-based writer Herbert Wright travels in the north to see why
Herbert wright
There's certainly more to the Portuguese house than the clich of the white
volume shining in an arid landscape. I
went to see for myself, firstly in Portugal's north.
In Esposende, birthplace of CIAM veteran Viana de Lima, his Casa das
Marinhas is a very modernist composition: stone walls sandwich a two-storey
facade containing rectangles of colour,
and a single steel column rises to a flat
roof slab. Colours and lines feel like Gerrit Rietveld. The double-height living
room is flooded with light but extends
under an open landing. Functional
wooden partitioning and storage has apertures to display art. In a connected
round tower, a wavy curtain rail closes
off a bedroom space by the top of the
stair. This 1956 house is now a museum.
A paper clipping about Frank Lloyd
Wright and Vida Sovietica magazines
show de Lima's sentiments- not those of
the right-wing Estado Novo regime
which favoured constructivist-monumentalism. Houses were not government commissions, so they allowed
modernism to be aired.
The modernism here is more like prewar modern art, far more playful than
the minimalism of Mies or Johnson. At
Porto's School of Fine Arts, where Viana
de Lima studied in the 1920s, architecture and art were unseparated right up
to 1979. That helped shape the extraordinary 'Porto School' movement, and its
two Pritzker winners.
The first is living legend lvaro Siza,
and in Moledo, we saw an extended bungalow by him, the Casa Alves Costa.
From the street, it looks like just a wall.
In contrast to de Lima's masterpiece,
this turns inward, embracing a shady
garden of pine trees in three angled sections with pitched roofs. Modernist
roofs don't always need to be flat! Inside,
it's all about refuge and feeling enclosed
in the angles. When finished in 1968, it

was so different that, according to local
architect Srgio Fernandez, the municipality didn't classify it as a house! Not
all is angles... Siza's wardrobes look art
deco with their rounded corners.
The single-plane roof on Fernandez'
own house, built 1971-74 in woodland
high above Caminha, is pitched as steep
as the slope it's situated on. The
Vill'Alcina is more of a long alpine chalet
than a villa. Bedrooms like alcoves come
off an axis running perpendicular to the
slope of roof and hill. The kitchen/dining
area is like a terrace overlooking the living room area. A little patio outside has
red window shutters, perhaps the same
ox-blood red as that favoured by Fernando Tvora, the Porto School giant who
bridged modernism with local tradition.
Fernandez recalls attending a meeting
of Team 10 with Tvora in the late 1950s.
Tvora taught Siza, who mentored Eduardo Souto de Moura, Portugal's other
Pritzker winner and designer of the
Casa em Moledo (1988), another hillside
retreat. This is a simple, beautiful masterpiece. Concrete walls clad with stone
define a rectangular volume, its long
sides full-height glass. Within this box is
another box of wood, enclosing bedrooms. Along the corridor, glass faces
the rock face rising behind. Light filters
tranquilly onto plants in the gap. The
juxtaposition of different materials and
the Miesian rectilinearity are very Souto de Moura, but the house also feels like
an update on Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School architecture, in its integration with nature, its flat, low space and
stone walls, one of them dividing living
room and kitchen. Carry Grant directed
by Hitchcock could be standing by the
fireplace!
In Ofir, a beach zone in Esposende, is
a sad Tvora house. In an overgrown
garden, a faded yellow rectangle mounted on a grimy white marks a chimney.
Behind an oxblood-red internal wall,
fire has burnt out a great room, but beyond, beneath a traditional terracotta
The Stone House by Jos Gigante recycles stone from a granary catarina ribeiro
The Casa das Marinhas by Viana de Lima is a masterful composition of modernist

elements. catarina ribeiro
roof, the house still lives. Rooms are

painted in faded colours, and wooden
fixtures speak of a clean-lined modernity. Outside, tiny coloured mosaic tiles
are embedded in a concrete fountain,
now brown with old rain water. Engraved in a concrete beam is the oncebright house's date: 1956. Typically vernacular, Tvora incorporated local
stone and natural paints.
In the hills above Guimares, Jos Gigante's Stone House is very contemporary. Twelve full-height apertures over
two storeys are punched into a stone facade sitting on a stone apron patio where
grain was once crushed. With all its Afzelia hardwood shutters shut, the house
looks blind, but the screens are actually
louvers with adjustable slits. With the
screens open, the facade becomes transparent and the stone as thin as a grid of
steel. Upstairs are bedrooms, downstairs an open living room/kitchen. The
other three facades are solid stone. The
blue/grey granite was recovered from a
granary that was there. This has the solid, plain geometry of Loos, and like the
Souto de Moura house, simplicity and
texture have stunning effect.
Finally, high in the damp, spectacular
pined mountains of the Gers National
Park, is the 190m2 Casa Adpropeixe by
Carlos Castanheira (2008). It is simultaneously part of the landscape, and isolated from it, raised several metres
above an ex-tennis court. Under a metal
roof, it is clad in copper to age with time.
This rectilinear floating house is also
about wood-treated Nordic pine that
will become silvery with time. It was
made modularly by north Portuguese
carpenters and assembled on site. A generous boardwalk terrace overlooks a
lake 60m below.
Modernism drifted into a locationfree bland uniformity, but in Portugal,
creativity thrived in the individuality of
the house typology. It adapted to local
conditions and traditions, using local
skills- just as Tvora wanted six decades
ago. Portuguese houses still rule.
This is the
Portuguese
Pavilion
Friendly fire
CURATOR
Pedro Campos Costa
Editorial Director
Alessia Allegri
Authors
Adoc
Andr Tavares
Artria
Ateliermob
Like Architects
Mariana Pestana
Miguel Eufrsia
Miguel Marcelino
Paulo Moreira
Pedro Clarke
SAMI Arquitectos
Susana Ventura
Contributors
lvaro Domingues
Gonalo Loureno
Herbert Wright
Joo Baa
joo Lus Ferreira
Jos Aguiar
Jos capela
Jos Manuel Fernandes
Manuel Lacerda
Pedro Bandeira
Pedro Costa
Sofia Mourato
Copy-editors
Antnio Faria
Carolina Sumares
Joana Coutinho
Joana Oliveira
Joo Simes
Marta Onofre
Pedro Silva
Pedro Vicente
Sara Neves
Zara Ferreira
Graphic Design
Silvadesigners
A research by Sara Eloy
A transformation grammar-based
methodology
for
housing
rehabilitation
Glorious Bastards
www.friendlyfire.info
fanzinefriendlyfire@gmail.com
ome of the most important contributions that Portugal has

made to the world came in the
form of glorious bastards.
From as early on as the Age of
Discovery, if not before: while
the Spaniards fucked the context, we fucked with it; whilst they
showed they had cojones, we showed
what the cojones were for. Rio de Janeiro and the mulata are consequences of
that promiscuous incursion.
Similarly, most of Portugals built environment is the consequence of a truly
international gang-bang: from the
buildings banged up by those returning
from Brazil in the 19th century, to others from the Portuguese who post-war
emigrated to Northern Europe, on to
the trafficking of urban architectures
to the countryside, the result is an exotic continuous city, permeated by one
of the worlds greatest per capita network of L.A. style asphalted curves.
Interestingly enough, the international focus on our contemporary
architecture started with the recognition of lvaro Sizas architectural bastardness, highlighting his impregnation of Modernism in a Portuguese-doit-better way.
However, the much praised and internationally acclaimed Portoguese
Architecture that followed, seems to have
gone astray from this ancestral bastardizing vocation. For three generations a
sort of eugenic process has developed in
which Discrete is the new visibility.
Nevertheless, theres News from
Portugal: the current unprecedented
diaspora of Portuguese architects is
comparable to the movement that took
place 5 centuries ago, crossing seas,
families, typologies and urban models.
The return of the glorious bastards is
now latent everywhere!
Pirates with Le Corbusier glasses see
further than the eye can reach.
In a recent interview, Koolhaas gave
the example of the history of the balcony as an architectural element and
how it wouldnt be complete without
examining how theyve been used by
dictators. The most relevant Portuguese contribution to this history
would be the marquise. The marquise
is a spatial bastard born from a fling between a balcony, and some aluminum
profiles and glazing that allows it to become enclosed, thus adding extra space
to an apartment. Its a common and
mostly illegal practice for everyone in
Portugal, raising it to an archetypical
status. The term itself is a bastardization of a French word (for a noble title)
that only in Portuguese has this particular meaning. The marquise (or the
marquisement) can be considered an
empowerment act, a built reminder
that, in democracy, the average Joe can
aspire to be the President or a Marquis.
Recently, lvaro Siza concluded the
second phase of Boua, a social housing
complex whose first phase was built
back in the 70s. Acknowledging how
the original dwellers had turned their
original balconies into pimp-my-ride
marquises, Siza included the bastardization of those spaces in his own project, building the second phase with
marquises from the very start.
Still bastards, after all these years?
Yes we can.
Libert, galit, fraternit, marquise!
Ivo Poas Martins and Pedro Barata
Friendly Fire is an independent architecture collective interested
in subversive and humorous narratives and practices. Its aim is to
address the architectural culture and its effects on everyday life in
an alternative and informal perspective. Friendly Fire is Alexandra
Areia, Gonalo Azevedo, Ivo Poas Martins, Matilde Seabra, Pedro
Baa and Pedro Barata.
The future of the real estate market in

Portugal will require the rehabilitation of existing residential areas in order to respond to new life-styles and
dwelling requirements that have
emerged in an era in which information and technology plays a structuring role in society.Starting from these
premises Sara Eloy suggests a rehabilitation methodology that uses shape
grammar and space syntax as tools to
identify and encode the principles and
rules behind the adaptation of existing
houses to new requirements. The use
of these tools enable the definition of
a methodology for transforming dwellings based on specific conditions with
the ability to impose a very precise and
systematic form of intervention. This
methodology is called a transformation grammar based-methodology
since it enables shape transformation
to be managed within dwellings by creating a process that can encompass all
the valid transformation rules for a
given dwelling and a specific family.
In addition to defining a general

methodology applicable to all the
building types, the study focuses on
a specific type, called rabo-de-ba-
calhau (cod-tail), built in Lisbon

between 1945 and 1965 for which a
specific methodology has been generated.
Rehabilitation methodology
Floor plan and graph of the original dwelling (on the left), rehabilitated dwellings
according to 1st strategy (two on the right) and to 2nd strategy (two on the middle)
Portuguese Official Representation at the 14th International Architecture

Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 7 June to 23 November 2014
at last
Just a Change
To bring back the live

conditions houses
Just a Change is a volunteer association
that rehabilitates damaged homes of
families who cannot afford it. It has
about 140 volunteers; all of them college students from different fields,
none of them with more than 25 years.
Through an ongoing work, organized
by shifts, they renovate two houses for
month. They first get in touch with the
parish councils about the homes and
families most deprived. After checking
conditions and urgency priorities, they
take technical advice from civil engineering and architecture experts and
get down to business.
Started from a simply willingness of
helping people, they have tried various
routes until reach the rehabilitation
idea: we realized there were a large
number of solidarity associations, but
no one for home treatment. They began with street performances to raise
money but, after three years, they have
such recognition that a solid network
of sponsors and incentives underlie
their goals.
http://www.justachange.pt/
www.homeland.pt
Newspaper distribution point
" In situ"
A new edition
The In Situ project, organized by CEACT/UAL (Study Centre for Architecture, City and Territory of University
Autnoma of Lisbon) in collaboration
with the FAB LAB of the ISCTE, University Institute of Lisbon, is an architecture laboratory and construction
that aims to combine research and intervention. Creating a direct relationship between the constructed reality
and an academic study, it is intended to
research and intervene in areas of
spontaneous genesis with the ambition
to act on concrete realities and based
on the place, the people and their social
dynamics. The ultimate goal of the laboratory is to build, using CAD /CAM
tools, the elements that may be identified as the neighbourhoods needs.
The laboratory in 2013 was held in
the neighbourhood of Torro 2 in Trafaria, close to Lisbon.
It is now happening the next edition that
take place this month in the same area.
www.facebook.com/pages/
In-Situ-Laborat%C3%B3rio-deInterven%C3%A7%C3%A3o-em-Arquitetura-2013/564033943648113
Weather
30
Next issue: Wrapping up an ongoing process
Clear blue sky Plenty of sunshine.

Moderate winds mostly persist and coastal breezes.
Moderately high waves of greater length. Low
humidity levels.

Homeland 2

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The Future is the Beginning

A doric column to reveal a material

No matter what rurality

Four perspectives to deepen the

to rethinking the notion of

DIRECTOR Pedro Campos Costa

Housing policies in Portugal

Mapping the Vacant Housing in 18 of Portugal's

Total of vacant houses

On the making the handbook

Homeland, August 2014

2 NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

Homeland, August 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL 3

The city, a ghetto of different forms of knowledge

Joo Lus Ferreira

joana oliveira &

In his work, as well as in the thought

Today, city centres

about the common ground. Maybe a

Ilustration: Ana Arago

If old, the city

highways junctions and shopping malls...

Napoleonic land register, 1808-1811

PCC: The idea of living geographies, as you mention several times

that is closer in time to our experience,

the historic continuum of city), at the

Map of Venice by Combatti, 1847

things that make sense, but take Siena,

the argument that comes from the

building was built - Gardella in Giudecca,

4 NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

Vacant housing in Portugal

Homeland, August 2014

Homeland, August 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL 5

Vacant housing in Portugal

Linking the large amount of empty homes

Homeland, August 2014

6 NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

Homeland, August 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL 7

Vacant housing in Portugal

Vacant housing in Portugal

Zara ferreira & JOANA oliveira

In the construction of the Vacant

Distribution of conventional dwellings according to

Regio Autnoma da Madeira

Change rate of the number of conventional dwellings

Secondary residence/seasonal use

Secondary residence/seasonal use

Distribution of vacant dwellings according to their

Distribution of conventional dwellings according

housing: Percentage of new Construction in Portugal

Change rate of the number of conventional dwellings

number, proportion and variation of classic habitual

More dwellings than people

Number of conventional dwellings and classic families

(Graphic3: Distribution of conventional

About the construction

here are 735,128 vacant

Homeland, August 2014

8 NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

Homeland, August 2014