Homeland 3

HOW IS IDENTITY RELATED
TO MODERNITY?
RE-QUALIFICATION? RATHER
URBAN REDISCOVERY
THE GRANARY OF
THE NATION
MACAU MODERN GLORY:

HOW IS ABSORBING MODERNITY
ABLE TO CONSTRUCT AND CELEBRATE
NEW FORMS OF IDENTITY? P.25
WE ARE ABLE TO IDENTIFY

A NUMBER OF ISSUES INSIDE
A CLOSED BUILDING THAT REFLECT
THE CITYS STRUCTURE P.21
IMAGENING A SILO BEING REFILLED

WITH AI WEIWEIS SUNFLOWER
SEEDS. FROM THE REMOTE
JINGDEZHEN P.29
homeland
News from Portugal
Demolition
can
generate
value
October
2014
03
14th International
Architecture
Exhibition
Venice
DIRECTOR PEDRO CAMPOS COSTA
One month
of residency P.6
In the temporary home at

Avenida dos Aliados learning
about the city directly from its
different users and inhabitants
Beyond
the hype P.11
Because effective change
occurs only with the support
and the will of the inhabitants
and the municipality from
architects to politicians
Summoning the
Collective P.14
A propositional conceptual
agenda to balance the
productive relationships
between the built environment
and global capital in a
democratic arena
The staircase
affair P.18
In reaching the rooftops
as a strategy for urban
rehabilitation, one of the keys
is to be found on the way up
The space of intimacy

in the absence of
the body P.22
The last exercise on the
detached house to discover that
the space of intimacy cannot
exist by itself, separated from
all the elements which define
and compose it
(Not just) a place

for the old P.26
Planning the new countryside
re-discovering that the old
role of the architect may still
be relevant today
Architecture needs to go beyond the

question of how things can be done
and reach the why and the where
Architects would rather deal will constraints and solve issues with briefs
that are presented to them and laws written by others than to influence the
law-making framework. But, without this process, architecture is being
increasingly strangulated. P.3
All quiet on the western front

JOS ANTNIO BANDEIRINHA
And nowadays, (), where are we at?
Free from any kind of typological or stylistic impositions other than those emanating from petty technical-municipal
corruption, we are still merrily going
around spreading our single-family
houses over hills and valleys, taking infrastructures, networks, power and
even collective transportation through
miles and miles of municipal roads. We
fulfil our moral obligations. We isolate
the external surroundings of buildings. In our individualized villas, roofs,
yards and backyard annexes, we freely
produce wind, solar and photovoltaic

power. We visit every single sustainable architecture website and we are
having a great time with the guys from
the neo-vanguards imagining a gestating metropolis in the houses still being
built in the middle of nowhere.
The product of all the perverseness
that urban order can entail moral too
of course but mostly ideological perverseness cities remain empty as
their centres die a slow death, thanks
to the last remnants of a services sector
strongly protected by the State.
But most of them have wasted away for

good, as if stricken by a transcendental
punishment for their absurd collectivist ambition.
Without any room left for irony, we are
finally fulfilling the approach to our
utopia of social organization. We have
reached out Midwest. Even if we are
overflowing from the hills, valleys and
Gabion walls, we have reached our
prairie. We are the ones who decide
and provide, us and no-one else. We are
free-berals.
But we are penniless P. 17
Portuguese
Pavilion
Portugal is officially represented at the
14th International Architecture Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia through
a newspaper.
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 Absorbing
Modernity: 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.
Getting over
Modernity P. 29
PEDRO VERDE (ARQUITETO)
Participation is
the new black
() we need to see dwellers as experts. They are not experts on architecture, so its redundant to let them do the
design, but they are for sure experts on
living there.
We need to stop orbiting around the
idea that people are incapable of adding
any value to planning processes (no
participation), or in opposition, that
people are fully capable of designing
the changes that they want to see implemented reducing the presence of the
architect to a mere translator (soft participation). There is still room for an insurgent architect. P. 13
Art, the
dissection
of the city P.38
Homeland, October 2014
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Highlights Editorial
Opening
SOCIETY
Filipa Ramalhete
The challenge is to find a home that is
versatile and unique enough to encompass both individual lives and the sharing
of good memories. P.9
ECONOMY
Joana Pestana
Lages
The miraculous procedure of transforming
informal into formal through the holy grail
of participation because the dwellers are
not experts on architecture, so its redundant to let them do the design, but they
are for sure experts on living there. P.13
POLITICS
Jos Antnio
Bandeirinha
Most of the cities, product of all the perverseness that urban order can entail,
have wasted away for good, as if stricken
by a transcendental punishment for their
absurd collectivist ambition. P.17
CULTURE
Mnica Calle
INTERVIEW BY
PEDRO CAMPOS COSTA
A talk with Monica Calle. Actress,
Stage Director and Director of the Casa
Conveniente, who created some of the most
interesting shows of Portuguese Theatre of
the last decade. P.21
INTERNATIONAL
Diogo Burnay
The modern colonial architecture in
Macau. How is absorbing modernity able
to construct and celebrate new forms of
identity? P.25
TERRITORY
Joo Soares
Beyond the frozen image of a rural and
mild vernacular, successive layers of
agricultural crops adding to one another,
co-inhabiting with aqueducts and levees, agricultural warehouses, railways,
and silos. P.29
INTERVIEW
Secretary of State for Culture
Jorge Barreto Xavier P. 37
CITIES AND ART

The first solo exhibition
by Portuguese urban artist
Alexandre Farto AKA Vhils
at the Electricity Museumin
Lisbon. A profound reflection
on the collective memory
of cities, their giddying
images, and their inhabitants
stories P. 38
TRAVEL
Journey to the Alentejo and
back to Lisbon: Herbert Wright
visits Malagueira, Estremoz,
Vila Viosa and Mouraria. P.39
Forty-two
42,195 km is the distance of a marathon, not so much a sport more of mission as

the legend goes, to carry the news of victory in battle, from Marathon to Athens
PEDRO CAMPOS COSTA
0 KM A CHALLENGE
Architecture has a social and political
component that is absolutely inextricable from its way of existing. Over the last
100 years, the essential elements of Portuguese architecture have been territory, its relationship with politics and of
course society and its identity, not a given form, colour or style. The challenge
was to translate that into a representation. How do we hold a Portuguese representation in Venice, conditioned as we
are by the context of financial hardship?
How do we hold a show of Portuguese
architecture that transcends form?
1 KM VENICE IN PORTUGAL
The initial idea was to hold the Portuguese representation in our territory,
in Portugal. Territory is the basis of architecture. It was very important not to
stay solely in the field of ideas, as I was
keen to instigate pilot-projects that
could point to paths, question, debate
and suggest, through a practice lead approach, the absorption of modernity
and the current state of affairs in Portugal. Operative processes of urban
planning, installations, occupations or
other projects have now started. This
year, Portugal was Venice.
2 KM A NEWSPAPER AS A
REPRESENTATION MEDIUM
Right from the start, ambition was running high and everything seemed possible. We were unanimous that it should
be an open process. But content had to
relate to present day challenges and the
current reality, as well as portray 100
years of modernity in Portugal, without
being to illustrative or monographic.
The idea of a newspaper arose as a
physical possibility as an anchor to assist with structuring the multitude of
actions and the diversity we were aiming for, as well as overcoming the eternal problem of space, in tandem with
ensuring full access and wide diffusion.
Form followed content.
4 KM A DYNAMIC TOOL
FOR PUBLISHING ORIGINAL
CONTENT
Having one single edition would be tantamount to a catalogue, hence static. It
would cease to be news about what was
happening here, continuity would be
lost, timing. Our budget didnt allow for
a lot of high-flying dares, so we decided
to go with 3 issues. We had 6 researchers per issue who would frame theoretically a variety of themes centred on the
absorption of modernity, and a number
of experts to draw up more specific reference frameworks. In addition to that,
we wanted to carry out a survey on
housing throughout modernity in Portugal so we called upon universities for
collaboration. We received some positive feedback, and as Lisbon and Porto
would turn out to have rather more systematized data, we ended up confining
the survey to those two cities. We were
surprised with the amount of informa-
tion that already existed in shelves and

archives, we had the urge to do a lot of
things just with this body of knowledge.
3 KM TEAM
A newspaper is a team. The graphic designers were amongst the first to come
on board. Silva! Studio has a long proven
track record in printed press, in addition
to a vast portfolio, so the choice was
easy. For the opinion pieces we had selected a group of researchers and leading figures of unquestionable relevance
spanning several areas, but the editors
were key. Mariana Pestana and her interesting curatorial work, where the
performative and the temporal fit one of
the areas I defined for Porto; atelier
Mob, who had just opened the exhibition
tanto mar and are active in the social
field where the informal naturally falls
into Miguel Eufrsia who spent several hours with me during the initial stage
of the PhD course, discussing among
other themes the ethical and collective
role of architecture. As for rehabilitation, I could have chosen one of several
authorities on the matter, but I went for
Andr Tavares, who is very open-minded. Pedro Clarke works on rural areas,
especially in Africa, and in London he
has been following the new international trend of the return to the rural! Last
but not least, Susana Ventura is a young,
talented and meticulous young woman
who will have an auspicious future in architectural theory and curatorship in
Portugal. These 6 musketeers were
joined by 6 architects tasked with the
mission of materializing the projects:
LIKE, who work with temporary installations; Paulo Moreira, who splits his
time between Angola and London and
whose peculiar, excellent way of designing and huge capacity for community
engagement we wanted to take a gamble
on; ADOC, who have developed remarkable work in commercial architecture;
Artria, known for their activism with
communities in some Lisbon neighbourhoods; SAMI, a duo producing architecture that has already gone international
and cannot help but carry within itself
the weight of the history of Portuguese
architecture from the past few years and
finally Miguel Marcelino who combines
with great ease Nordic and southern influences, in a very distinct discourse. I
was personally acquainted with half of
these architects, I met some at JA the
Portuguese Architects Journal but I
was far more intimate with their work.
I paired them up in duos that might not
have worked, but they did. Actually,
some didnt know each other at all and
quickly forged a very close relationship.
After the team meeting at the Triennale
to discuss the projects, the race was
starting to gather pace.
5 KM VENICE
As for the meetings with Rem Koolhaas, a novelty this year, we attended
only 2 of the 5 that were held, and most
countries were already working in a
process that they had initiated beforehand. The duration of the Biennale
went from 4 to 6 months. We had half
the budget and more demands than in
previous years. For a representation
that wanted to create content, the effort would be huge. Indeed! There was
plenty of oxygen in the plains, our legs
were still fresh but the mountains were
coming up ahead.
cess was nearing completion. The Portuguese Pavilion was going to be out on
the streets, carried around by visitors,
lots of logistics, printing, plane, boat
and newspaper boys.
10 KM OH, MY GOD!!!!
We held two press conferences, one in
Lisbon and another one in Porto, which
required an additional effort, compensated in the end by the clear message that
this was a national, not a Lisbon, representation. The presss reaction to the
proposal was positive, the idea received
a good welcome in social networks,
blogs, etc. Surprisingly, a news item was
published in Pblico newspaper stating
that the Venice Biennales Chief Curator
had stated that it was a pity Portugal that
was not entering the exhibition with a
space and that regardless of the newspapers quality, an exhibition like the one
presented for the previous edition would
have been far better. Of course this news
item was purely political and Rem Koolhaas himself denied it days later but the
controversy was raging and the representation had been tied down to the
monetary issues. Form, not content. The
team was upset, fundraising was affected, the marathon was beginning to show
its hardships.
20KM OPENING
Excitement was in high gear, the whole
team had gathered in Venice, one of the
few occasions where we managed to get
everybody together, and though we
knew we were only half way there, the
mood was that of unwinding. At 6 pm, an
emotional speech clearly conveyed the
culmination of a phase marked by tremendous pressure and hard work. When
I told our neighbour, the Curator of the
Moroccan Representation, what our
budget was, he couldnt believe it. But we
did it and we were already half way there.
15 KM WE HAD THE
PARTNERS TO WIN
The Newspaper was beginning to take
shape and we fired up to go once more.
The teams were happily surprised by
the reactions from the Municipalities.
In Porto, the Alderman for Culture,
Paulo Cunha e Silva, our countrys great
national cultural agitator, brought together another two exceptional Aldermen, Manuel Correia Fernandes from
Urban Planning and Manuel Pizarro
from Housing. The support from the
Porto Municipality was shaping up to be
outstanding. In Matosinhos, despite the
themes political touchiness, both Mayor
Guilherme Pinto and Alderwoman Joana Felcio were amazing. In Loures,
Mayor Bernardino Soares supported
the initiative from the get-go but the enthusiasm and support of Alderman Tiago Matias were exceptional. In Setbal
we were received with arms wide open
by Mayor Maria das Dores and Municipal Director Joo Quinto also proved a
great supporter of the project. Alderman Eduardo Luciano together with
Lus Garcia in vora were our touchstone and mainstay. Finally in Lisbon,
architect Manuel Salgado supported the
representation and architect Nuno Morais oversaw the project. Before the
opening of the Venice Biennale, everything was up and running: the territorial goal had been achieved.
17KM ADRENALINE
An adrenaline rush when the paper is
put to bed is a common occurrence in
every single newspaper, there is always
a certain amount of stress, countless
phone calls, missing photos. Walter
managed to save my life at the 11th hour,
lucky me! But at 2 am, the phone rings.
What? We had two extra pages, result
of a miscommunication between the
printshop and the designers. The pro-
25KM BACK TO WORK, TOPS

AND MORE TOPS!
The representation was featured in several international magazines Abitare,
A10, Quadern and Volume in the Portuguese Arqa, as well as in the mainstream
press in Venice, including the Gazzetino
newspaper that ranked us as one of the
7 best pavilions. We were selected for several other best-of lists from different
magazines in A10 we were classed in the
10 best pavilions, coming in 3rd in Director Indira Vant Kloosters picks; Gonalo
Delicato, in the online architecture
guide, selected us among the 10 must-see
pavilions, to name just a few of the countless mentions and nods we received, both
online and in the printed press. This gave
us an additional surge of energy.
30KM VENICE IN PORTUGAL
FROM WORDS TO DEEDS
The Venice Biennale in Portugal has
started, LIKE and Mariana Pestana
have occupied the old headquarters of a
bank for a month; in Monte Xisto the exhibition taking place in the Town Hall
on October 3 was approved; in vora we
hosted an exhibition and a debate and
the project might go ahead as funding
options are being explored; everything
is up and running in Setbal, a publication and maybe even a building; in
Loures ADOC have 7 buildings to study,
as they say, when it rains, it pours; and
in Lisbon the project was awarded
50.000 euros worth of funding.
35KM CHANGING EVERYTHING AGAIN
Not everything could turn out well: fundraising didnt go as expected, some
backers fell through and some expenses were higher than expected in Venice,
forcing us to review logistics. But, we
will survive.
40KM ALMOST THERE!!!
I can already picture the finish line, it
has indeed been a long way, almost one
year of constant learning. I am writing
this editorial for the final issue of the
Homeland newspaper, but we still want
to hold a formal closing of the representation and maybe create an archive to
gather this entire content that was produced. The end is usually the hardest
part but our legs wont fail us.
Lets go, lets finish this!
Demolition can
generate value
Portugal has an extremely aged housing stock and about 1,800,000 vacant units.
What solutions are available to us to invert the paradigm, how can we rehabilitate, what new challenges
are we facing and how can we make the market more dynamic? Is our legal system helping us?
Interview with Eduardo Gonalves Rodrigues, Gonalo Reino Pires, Tiago Piscarreta
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Opening
interview by CARLOS PINTO, PEDRO CAMPOS COSTA

illustration by ANA ARAGO
Architecture needs to go
beyond the question of how
things can be done and reach
the why and the where.
Architects would rather deal
with constraints and solve
issues with briefs that are
presented to them and laws
written by others than to
influence the law-making
framework. But, without this
process, architecture is being
increasingly strangled. In
this newspaper we come to
understand over the last few
months that the Homeland
projects somehow are blocked
by legal mechanisms, both
laws and regulations. Is it
really the law or is it politics?
Could these be crystallized or
even become cultural ideas
that annul other readings
and dynamics?
We approached three
lawyers with radically
different background
experiences and practices
relating to architecture and
planning. The conversation
took off like a rocket and
we realized that there is no
shortage of drive or ideas;
that is certainly not the reason
behind the lack of dynamism in
an area that is in dire need of
establishing interdisciplinary,
across-the-board connections.
Opening
he separation between
the right to built and
the right of property,
one of the basis of our
legal system, is a concept that the average
citizen often does not
understand.
GRP: True but I
think the problem with
people is a fundamental one: its how
people understand reality.
We depart from a concept of property that ends up being more of a guarantee than a right; bottom line, as a property owner, I have a guarantee that only
in certain specified cases, and only in
relatively extreme ones my property
right might be affected or diminished.
We can go from a more liberal concept of property to a more social concept from the moment we start allowing for public interest to interfere in
the private interests of property owners and allowing for those private
rights to be conditioned by certain
public interests. This is the case with
public use restrictions, the enforcement of certain master plans, criteria for approval or refusal or licensing
requests all of this made property
right completely permeable to public
interest.
The excessive importance of real
estate in the economy increases the
weight and importance attached to
the built environment as a support
for tertiary activity, in the services
Actually,
the problems
we are facing
will not be
solved by
more laws,
but rather
by people
and money.
Both are scarce
at present
and tourism industry, and imposes
upon the State the need for a more
preventive position in the management of building rights.
EGR: Yes, that is exactly right! The
State needs to operate more as a regulator. The 1st generation of Municipal
Master Development Plans [PDMs]
was very rigid and made it very hard
to manage situations as the ones tackled by Homelands pilot projects. Nowadays, there are many examples of
how the new, much more flexible
PDMs allow for a broader and more
discretionary approach, from the political point of view, than the one there
was before.
The new Law (Lei de Bases do Solo,
Ordenamento do Territrio e Urbanismo) introduces a change in paradigm: promoting containment of
construction in the face of dispersion; seeking greater control and
market regulation by taxing urbandevelopment related capital gains
arising from the classification of rural land to urban and in this way
steer investment towards consolidated spaces. Is this how it will happen?
EGR: I dont know if the outcome
will be exactly the one you refer. The
new law will have a greater impact in
terms of new construction and I am
not sure if it will trigger an increase in
urban regeneration.
But the focus on new construction
will disappear after having been
predominant... with municipalities
THE ROLES OF THE

DESIGNER AND
THE MUNICIPAL
TECHNICAL
OFFICER WILL
CHANGE!
GRP: But another one of our
problems is that we do not
have technical staff trained to
the meet the challenges set by
this Basic Law and this wave of
rehabilitation that is now viewed
as absolutely essential.
ERG: In regeneration, technicians
will be held even more
responsible, as it is a far more
complex operation than putting
up a brand new building.
Architects will be more
conditioned by what already exists
but on the other hand, there will
be a bigger responsibility at stake
and a much larger risk since
the law will start to hold them
accountable. Municipalities will be
more active in the supervision and
inspection of construction sites.
TP: I absolutely agree I am just
not sure this American style
shift from preventive to on-site
inspection is actually a good idea.
We have a building and design
tradition from architecture and
engineering that I personally
consider to be very good.
To change that is to mess
with a good thing.
DO YOU STILL WANT

TO BE PART OF MY
CONDOMINIUM?
GRP: With the current housing
stock being so intensive and
extremely fractioned, the
imperviousness of property law
to other private rights backfires.
It is excessive and ends up
blocking a lot of the action that
evolves matters contained in the
constitutive act of the residents
association, to the point that
they can only be altered by a
unanimous vote.
TP: In our project Lisbon Skyline
we talk at length about this:
people in residents associations
often come from different
backgrounds, different economic
conditions and also have
different outlooks on things
the consensual management
of residents associations is
not easy to reach. We have a
lot of experience in this matter
because we work with it every
day, it is a very rough area.
When a member of a residents
association doused himself with
gasoline at a meeting, I realized
they werent fooling around.
GRP: So I think that the value of
a real estate unit is increasingly
dependent on the efficiency and
solvency of the condominium. This
phenomenon tends to be more
serious not so much in situations
where the residents association
integrates only a small number
of real estate units, but especially
in the case of holiday resorts and
gated communities where it can
achieve massive proportions.
promoting it to, in some way, to generate more revenue

GRP: We cant lay the blame on the
municipalities alone, though they had
their finances riding primarily from
construction taxes. We are coming
out of a paradigm full of bad students!
The problem wasnt just the municipalities, it was also with the other stakeholders
TP: And surprisingly we are awarding them with new powers and responsibilities.
GRP: After the troubled period of
April 25, municipalities gradually
grew to depend more and more on urban development taxes and counting
on those taxes for ordinary expenditure. That was wholly incompatible: to
allocate extraordinary revenue to cover ordinary expenses!
As a result of the tenancy regimes in
force, we quickly drifted towards a
policy of incentives to privately owned
property, plunging Portugal into an
unparalleled spiral of production of
private housing. The State endorsed
this model through low-interest loans!
This was the state of affairs for 20,
25 years and when we tried to reverse
the situation, the rental market was
still extremely iffy, offering no security to the property owners.
At the moment we have an extremely aged housing stock and about
1,800,000 vacant units according to
2011 INE survey. These figures are ab-
It is hard to
believe we still
havent reviewed
the General
Regulation for
Urban Construction which
contains rules
that prove
inadequate to the
times in which
we live are living.
surd: we have a shrinking population,
especially in the population with purchasing power or, shall we say, with
financial earnings that anticipate the
possibility of boosting the real estate
market, and we dont have enough immigration to sustain this boost
We are presently facing a dilemma:
We need to drive dynamism into a
market where there is, at the same
time, no demand and an oversupply.
Is there really a market for rehabilitation?
GRP: Actually, the problems we are
facing will not be solved by more laws
but rather by people and money. Both
are scarce at present. On my way here,
on the motorway, I saw an advertisement selling a house in the middle of nowhere. Who is ever going to buy that?
That thing is worthless! Typical case of
a liability. We arent far off from Municipalities reviewing requests for demolition and initiating demolition processes
of buildings. Contrary to the investment
in rehabilitation which offers a return
after 20 years, investment in demolition
starts immediately paying off after considering the savings it generates by not
having to pay maintenance, the reduction of infrastructural cost and reduction of property taxes. In this case demolition can generate some value.
TP: Its interesting because in that
case you are changing the land use
classification
GRP: Im not sure if its land use
classification ours are no longer
planning problems, they are just

about the way in which we attain or
boost our territories. Planning either
serves as diagnostic, and in that case
planners determines what stays, or
serves to bring about legal actions
where the planners determine that we
are going to change what is there. At
this moment, in the absence of financing channels to support any possible
alteration, we are only able to rehabilitate and preserve what there is.
Will planning no longer be the focus?
GRP: Planning was highly focused
on solving conflicts between those
who wanted urban development, who
wanted to grow and build. This does
not exist right now. There are no economic conditions for that!
And the law is already very strict,
taking an unequivocal stance for containment and rehabilitation.
Will taxation on capital gains associated with the change of land use
change the economic model?
GRP: I could be wrong but I bet we
are in for a very negative backlash on
the issue of capital gains in the new
law: [the reality of] building a housing
estate five years ago will be totally different from building a housing estate
5 years from now seen as profit margins are so harshly different.
The weight of the legal system on the
practice of architecture has suffered
huge increments. Its almost like a
swamp suffocating the practice
EGR: True, this weight has indeed
been increasing and that originates difficulties to the architects professional
practice. Nowadays, it is very important for architects to be aware of how
strongly their practice is presently conditioned by the legal system We now
have a very nice roof, the Basic Law on
Planning and Building, but, unfortunately, underneath it, the house still
needs tidying up. A Basic Law cannot
be too detailed and we still have a long
way to go, in what relates to further
regulation in order to allow its principles to become practical and clear tools
for professionals. Moreover, we should
not forget the relevance of our national
level servitudes and restrictions and
our local level regulations that, for
their great diversity and quantity, are
not easy to master. On the other hand,
we also have technical regulations
waiting for an update. It is hard to believe we still havent reviewed the
RGEU [General Regulation for Urban
Construction] which contains several
rules that prove inadequate to the
times in which we are living.. Finally, it
is quite clear that architects (notably,
he Portuguese Architects Association)
and other professionals are not properly consulted in all law making decisions that directly affect the practice of
architecture and urban planning. This
should also change.
As a sector, construction suffered
a massive industrialization process
and with it a profound reorganization: it is now amply regulated, with
maybe even an excess of different
paperwork. The extensive transposition of European Community
rules led to enormous increases in
costs, with the clear goal of creating
markets to incorporate technologies and equipment that appeared
in the meantime in Central European economies, often not adjusted to
our geographical needs and climate.
The Exceptional Rehabilitation Regime manages to ease part of this
burden, doesnt it?
GRP: The document is actually a
fairly good initiative and an important
answer to the current context. The
seven-year period during which it will
be in force will allow us to ascertain
what is worthwhile and what isnt.
Judging by the studies it is based on,
the economic consequences are relevant as they point to savings up to 40%
in design and construction costs. That
is a lot of money.
Bios
EDUARDO GONALVES
RODRIGUES
Architect (Faculty of
Architecture University of
Lisbon, 2000) and Lawyer
(Catholic School of Law,
Lisbon, 2003). Practices
in planning, licensing
and tourism at Garrigues
Portugal.
GONALO REINO PIRES

Lawyer (University of
Lisbon 2001). Practices in
Planning and Construction
Law. Invited teacher at the
Post-Garduate Course in
Planning and Building Law,
at University of Lisbon.
TIAGO PISCARRETA
Lawyer. (Catholic School of
Law, Lisbon and Universit
Misericrde de Fribourg)
Practices in Consultancy,
Management and Judicial
Liquidator. Postgraduate in
Business Law at the University
of Coimbra. Postgraduate in
Management and Property
Valuation (ISEG University
of Lisbon).
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Temporary
Temporary
EVENT
PROGRAMME
1ST MOMENT
3RD MOMENT
FRIDAY, JUNE 27
6PM/18H
OPENING
Jorge Barreto Xavier,
Secretary of State for
Culture; Paulo Cunha
e Silva, Councillor for
Culture at CMP (Porto
Municipality); Manuel
Pizarro, Councillor for
Housing and Social work at
CMP (Porto Municipality);
Manuel Correia Fernandes,
Councillor for Urbanism at
Pedro Campos Costa,
Curator for the Portuguese
Representation for the
14th Venice Biennale of
Architecture; Samuel
Rego, Director-General
for the Arts (DGArtes)
MONDAY, JULY 14
6PM/18H
SOCIAL INHABITING IN
PORTO CHALLENGES
Manuel Pizarro,
Councillor for Housing
and Social work at CMP
(Porto Municipality)
MONDAY, JUNE 30
1PM/13H
LUNCH
Pedro Bandeira,
Architect and Curator
TUESDAY, JULY 1
1PM/13H
LUNCH
Gui Castro Felga,
Architect and worst guide
at Worst Tours
WEDNESDAY, JULY 2
6PM/18H
UNOCCUPIED PLACES :
THREE PERSPECTIVES
Ins Moreira, Architect
and Curator; Anselmo
Canha, Creative director
in Transformadora,
Bassist and Tenant in
Centro Commercial Shop;
Jeremy Pajeanc, artist
Jos Antnio Pinto has lunch at the house with four of the people he works with DINIS SOTTOMAYOR
A temporary house
One month of residency provided us with the opportunity to learn about the city directly from its different
users and inhabitants. In our temporary home at Avenida dos Aliados we received both invited and
spontaneous guests, who also took us out into the city and into their houses. Days passed by and the more
informed we were, the more complex the discussion became. It is difficult to make a balance of such an
intense and rich set of conversations and research, yet there are some considerations worth highlighting.
LIKEARCHITECTS +
MARIANA PESTANA
1st
In the first moment, dedicated to empty buildings and

temporary occupations, we
hosted a conversation where we learnt
about the process that transformed a
shopping mall into a spontaneous music
studio where more than 200 bands
practice today; and we hosted a discussion about the famous occupation of
the abandoned Escola da Fontinha, its
transformation into a social and cultural centre, unwanted by the former municipality who evicted the building.
It was inspiring to hear about these
bottom-up movements, and to realise
that empty buildings can constitute public spaces for the city. We discussed how
people could take an active part on the
re-occupation of the city. We began
thinking about the potential that exists
in the many empty buildings in the city
centre, imagining a system where vacant
properties would be subject to additional
taxation, encouraging landlords to accept low-income rents or embark on a
model of agreed squatting/ guardianship.
We realised, though, that the largest
property owners in Porto the church,
the banks and the city council are exempt from paying tax on their properties.
We even spoke to a large property developer of this city who manifested his
honest unwillingness to grant his property for meanwhile uses that would encompass housing. However, one can argue that there is an obvious economic
benefit that actually can be good for both
parts, if we take guardianship security
schemes like Camelot into consideration.
In any case, there is still a lot to be
done in order to draw any changes or
solutions. For example, there isnt an
official document that lists the empty
buildings in the city nor a map that illustrates where they are located, or to
whom they belong. And the truth is, by
being mostly empty, the city centre is
an expectant territory that can easily
be taken over by the economic forces of
the recent the touristic pressure which
is already beginning to be felt.
is a kind of temporary
nd There
resident of the city the
tourist that is (in)voluntary

pushing the former residents away from
the city centre. Our second moment was
therefore focused on the tourism boom,
which is being received with both enthusiasm bringing economic growth and
disdain Disneyfication the city.
Besides the obvious economic boost,
we questioned ourselves whether the
city is becoming a hostage of a strategy
of self-promotion. We see homes becoming guesthouses, traditional shops becoming souvenir shops and bus stops
transformed into sightseeing buses hopon hop-off spots and we ask ourselves
who and where are the real citizens?
Nowadays there will always be a queue
for your old time restaurant the Time
Out effect and they are even thinking
in installing traffic lights on 18th century tall bell tower, at Torre dos Clrigos.
We hosted a discussion about the effects
of tourism in Porto and learned from the
Tourism Office Director at Porto Municipality, that Porto will be one of the
first cities to commission a research project on the absorptive capacity of tourism by the city infrastructures. Despite
this, there doesnt seem to be a longterm strategy for tourism and it all
seems too spontaneous.
We have also realised that, despite the
significant number of new hotels gaining planning permission from the city
council and the fact that such hotels directly profit from the city, which is a public entity, and from the city heritage,
which belongs to its citizens, there is not
significant compensation being requested in exchange. And we see some of our
best buildings in the city being completely gutted by the thinking of private
profit. We had a chance to witness, in a
guided tour, what the tourist pressure
can do to an 18th century building in one
of the most traditional streets of Porto,
where the new development disrespects
the existing historical fabric keeping the
facade intact but completely demolishing the interior space (the new floor levels didnt even match the level of the former balcony). We also noticed a big Hostel Boom it seems that every Portuguese wants to have one of his own a
symptom that has both positive and negative aspects. As was said in one discussion, since the investment required to
make a hostel is very low, the probability
of damaging the original buildings is
small. In addition to this, the propagation of hostels contributes to the inhabitation of the empty city centre. Its the
double face of re-programming the city.
rd
During our residency we

also acknowledged the urgent need to think about
transitory housing solutions. We realised that there is no local policy in place
that considers the transitory condition
which affects many residents in the city.
The support for emergency housing
comes from the central Government via
Social Welfare, with lease contracts established with Inns in the city centre
that provide miserable accommodation
at very high rates. The conditions under
which residents live are not accompanied by the entity that celebrates the
contract, allowing for illegal situations.
In addition to the Inns, the offer is limited to shelters belonging to charities,
with shared accommodation in bunk
beds and very basic living conditions.
We invited the City Councillors responsible for Housing and Urbanism to discuss existing and potential new policies,
as well as the founders of the most successful cooperatives in Porto to understand whether such a model can assume
a sustainable housing model in the future, totally managed by its members.
We hosted debates about two housing
blocks in Porto, Boua being subject to
a process of gentrification where new
and old residents still co-habit the
neighbourhood, and Aleixo going
through a complicated demolition process, where two out of its five towers are
gone, based on a municipality perspective that attributes social problems
(drugs, crime) to the buildings, where
in fact the riverside land with a view
where the buildings sits is co-owned by
a property developer (the recently
bankrupt BES) and the city. We were
interested in discussing the possibility
of mixed use solutions for social housing, understanding what role of cooperatives might play in the future.
We hosted a lunch with a social worker from Campanh neighbourhood and

four of the people that he works with
and that have been living in a transitory condition shared rooms in Inns
for more than 10 years, under promises for a permanent housing solution.
Unaware of their constitutional right
to have a home and without the tools to
claim for it, they accept their extended
transitory condition without reservations. We understood the need to give
visibility to this subject and grant those
affected by this condition the means to
gain voice.
th
The fourth moment was reflective, where we looked

back at what was learnt,
and drew conclusions, thoughts and
possible solutions for the future. We invited young architectural practices
from Porto to discuss their ideas about
the role that the transitory might play
in the future city. The theatrical and
performative aspect of our residence
was explored in a conversation with a
group of artists that have used the window as a display for their work. Binary
distinctions between inside and outside, reality and fiction, public and private were abandoned for ambivalent
territories.
On a sunny sunday, we held a city mapping workshop, that allowed us to empirically recognize our city, acknowledging undiscovered relations and unveiling city-making opportunities.
The residence closed with a reflective
moment beginning with a discussion
about the notion of transitory with
three intellectuals who are also important cultural players of the city.
Throughout these encounters we understood that the temporary issue is actually very complex. But we also understood that there are a significant number of people and entities interested in
discussing possible solutions for very
different problems. Our living room became a civic space for debate in the city,
with regular guests interested in the
themes debated. And this was only really a beginning, where we might have
unveiled only the tip of the iceberg.
THURSDAY, JULY 3
9PM/21H
FILM PROJECTION:
DETROIT: THE
BANKRUPTCY
OF A SYMBOL
FRIDAY, JULY 4
6PM/18H
OCCUPANCY, FRONTIERS
AND LEGISLATION
Film projection
A Escola da Fontinha
Talk with: Jos Soeiro,
Sociologist and
Politician; Carlos Moreira,
Associao Fora da Porta
2ND MOMENT
TUESDAY JULY 8
6PM/18H
DOCUMENTARY
PROJECTION
BYE BYE BARCELONA,
FROM DIRECTOR
EDUARDO CHIBS
Talk and visit to
The Un:Almada House
(Rua do Almada, 19) with
Lus Tavares Pereira.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 9
1PM/13H
LUNCH
lvaro Santos, President
at SRU (Porto Vivo
Sociedade de Reabilitao
Urbana); Ana Delgado,
Urban Economy Professor
at Porto Faculty of
Economics
WEDNESDAY, JULY 9
9PM/18H
HOSTELS: LOW-COST
REHABILITATION?
Andr Tavares, Architect;
Ivo Poas Martins,
Architect; Pedro Bandeira,
Architect; Pedro Rui
Carvalho, Owner at
Pilot Design Hostel
THURSDAY, JULY 10
1PM/13H
LUNCH
Jos Antonio Teixeira,
President at RAR
Imobiliria
THURSDAY, JULY 10
3PM/16H
PORTO GUIDED TOUR
Gui Castro Felga,
Worst Tours
THURSDAY, JULY 10
6PM/18H
TOURISM A NEW WAY
OF INHABITING PORTO?
Susana Ribeiro, Tourism
Office Director at CMP
(Porto Municipality); Jorge
Garcia Pereira, Architect;
Paulo Santos da Cunha
and Sara Silva, Swark; Gui
Castro Felga and Pedro
Figueiredo, Worst Tours
TUESDAY, JULY 15
1PM/13H
LUNCH
Sandra Palhares,
Professor at Minho
University; Jos Antnio
Pinto, Social Assistant
at Junta de Freguesia
de Campanh
TUESDAY, JULY 15
6:30PM/18H30
INHABITING
PERFORMANCE
Talk with Dinis Machado
chaired by Pedro
Oliveira from Ncleo
de Experimentao
Coreogrfica, included
in the Cinema Coreografia
Series and with the invited
guests artists Rogrio
Nuno Costa and Paulo
Mendes
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16
10PM/22H
FROM STIGMA TO
DESIRE BOUA
NEIGHBOURHOOD
Orqudea Santos,
1st phase resident;
Tiago Correia,
2nd phase resident;
Pedro Baa, Architect
and storekeeper
THURSDAY, JULY 17
1PM/13H
LUNCH
Jos Antnio Pinto, Social
Assistant at Junta de
Freguesia de Campanh;
Marta Braga, Constantino
Pereira, Manuel Carvalho
(Nelinho), Fernando
(Nando)
THURSDAY, JULY 17
6PM/18H
DEMOLISH THE
PROBLEM ALEIXO
NEIGHBOURHOOD
Professor Lus Fernandes,
FPCEUP; Lus Vieira
Campos, Bicicleta
Director; Paulo Moreira,
Architect; Pedro
Campos Costa, Curator
for the Portuguese
14th Venice Biennale
of Architecture; Ana Lima,
Architect
FRIDAY, JULY 18
1PM/13H
LUNCH
Fernando Marinho,
Cooperativa dos Pedreiros
Guilherme Vilaverde,
Federao Nacional
de Cooperativas de
Habitao Econmica
Paulo Cardoso,
Imobiliria Odisseia
4TH MOMENT
FRIDAY, JULY 18
6PM/18H
PORTO YOUNG
ARCHITECTS DISCUSS
THE TRANSITORY IN
THE FUTURE
Bruno Andr and
Francisco Salgado R,
AND-R; Filipe Magalhes
and Ana Lusa Soares,
Fala Atelier; Filipa Frois
Almeida and Hugo Reis,
FAHR 0213; Diogo Brito,
Rodrigo Vilas-Boas and
Francisco Lencastre,
OODA; Pablo Rebelo
and Pedro Pita Pablo
Pita; Carlos Azevedo,
Carlos Guimares,
Lus Sobral and Joo
Crisstomo, depA; Pedro
Campos Costa, Curator
for the Portuguese
14th Venice Biennale of
Architecture
SUNDAY, JULY 20
4PM/16H
MAPPING WORKSHOP
Ins Moreira, architect;
Iconoclassistas
MONDAY, JULY 21 END
6PM/18H
TRANSIENCE
Paulo Cunha e Silva,
Councillor for Culture at
Gabriela Vaz Pinheiro
MADEP Director; Laura
Castro School of Arts
Director at UCP
Housing and Social Identity

JOS ANTNIO PINTO
photos DINIS SOTTOMAYOR
Social relationships always manifest
themselves in a space and time. The housing and lodging space is therefore loaded
with feelings, practices, meanings, logics
and rituals. My professional experience
is more focused in residents of council estates, socially less privileged population,
with limited educational, economical,
cultural and social resources. My closeness to economically deprived families,
made me aware that the place of residence is a structuring factor in the construction of a positive, prestigious and
renowned identity essential for a valued
social reputation or prized fame.
Unfortunately, social policies of central
and local consecutive governments in
Portugal have reproduced a construction
model that, for its peripheral locations, for
the bad quality of materials used in building, for the lack of quality of social facilities, for the absence of services, for the
deficiencies in a structure of resident participation, has allowed the stigma and devalued brand of these populations to be
enhanced and aggravated. The way council housing is conceived and planned continues to not favour involvement, sociability and the residents organized and collective participation. Public space is not
taken care of, locals are not heard nor do
they participate in the conception of what
is being built. Political decisions that directly alter the lives of the inhabitants are
made without the key interested parties.
Associated with unsanitary living conditions and a lack of comfort, amenity
and security we observed that residents
that live in these critical territories suffer
with this reputation of failure, bad luck,
gods punishment and negative social
distinction. The places where people live
socially set them apart. Places of residence reflect a discontinuity in the ways
of living within a city. It is necessary to
highlight, expose and report certain ruptures. Some live apparently well lodged,
not deprived, with comfort, power and
social prestige, others survive in areas of
exclusion, segregated, with mice and
snakes coming through their doors, with
no sanitation, with no interior bathroom,
with rain dripping down their pale walls.
At this moment, even though there are
some rehabilitation operations going on,
no action is being taken to value the status and the capacities of the residents. It
is necessary to adopt for these contexts
of deprivation a holistic and not only sectorial intervention policy that takes care
of lodging, employment, education,
health and cultural dynamics. Social
housing cannot be isolated and disjointed from other dimensions of social life.
Living in a neighbourhood with a bad
reputation and with no housing conditions has an effect in the self-esteem of
its inhabitants. This effect has two dimensions: the internal dimension and
the external dimension. Internal is the
residents realization that because he
lives in that place he is worthless, with
no social prestige. External is common
sense and the surrounding community
considering that those people that live
in that place are dangerous, disqualified, socially misplaced, and that it is
their own fault so therefore they do not
deserve opportunities of rehabilitation.
This image is very severe and penalizing. Its unfair because not every resident
of a council house has marginal or delinquent behaviour. It is penalizing because
it closes doors and objectively discriminates those who live there. It is also severe
in the sense that it allows these residents
to internalize an idea of social inferiority,
settling, becoming resigned, conforming
themselves and giving up the fight for a
better and more quality filled life.
Today, these housing territories are
taking a more enlarged dimension in
the city. The conflicts, the degradation
of social relationships between residents, the failure of community intervention projects and the lack of consistent social policies conditioned by the
financial tourniquet of austerity, can
jeopardize social cohesion and the minimum conditions required for the
emancipation of these households.
Constantino Pereira
120/month*
Manuel Carvalho
180/month
Constantino has lived in the annexes of a Guesthouse in Porto for two weeks. Before
this, he was evicted from a previous Guesthouse because of the impossibility of paying
his rent for one month, which led him to becoming homeless for one and a half months.
Manuel has lived in a room of a Guesthouse for nine years. The Guesthouse grants him
no access to the kitchen during the day and offers no living room or other leisure or
common spaces. The toilets are shared.
The house
and the
city
The city of Porto has housing problems. This is not a unique case in the
world, nor in Europe. It affects both
rich and poor countries! The housing
problems almost ceased to exist in Porto but the clocks were turned back and
they have now returned and are growing. I am not sure whether we are talking about housing as the basic concept of shelter which still subsists
and persists here and there, in hundreds of other places or if we are talking about new ways of dwelling and /
or using the city. The modern city created, among other myths, that of the
city for all. The so-called (or desired)
democratic city. A city of all, with all
and for all. Even if that was just a programme. We know how it started, how
it grew, but now we do not know very
well how it will end. Actually,we just
dont know how it will all end. The
house, the city, the country and the
world! Thats because its not merely a
matter of physical space but also a matter of living and socializing. Of freedom and all the freedom. Our city
lined up shelters which it called homes,
it called them fractions and heaped
them into containers that it called
blocks. It placed some alongside spaces
that it called streets which it did not
like so much and spread others across
spaces which it called green land,
hence without streets. It started by
giving homes to those who had possessions and shacks to those who
hadnt; then it started to give houses
to those who could afford them and
fractions to those who could not. Then
it did neither, nor the one, nor the other. The business became another
one: no longer that of the houses but
rather that of the territory (or that of
territories or spaces). In simple
words: it was costly to build a house but
not a piece of land. It was already done!
All that was required was pointing at
the map and asking to do something
there: and so, the modern city, slowly
but surely realised that the value or
capital gain was not exactly in the
house or in the block but rather in
what (in the site that was pointed at)
could be done there! Even if it was
only in expectation! The return to
the past to the traditional city - then
became revolutionary! Because little
adapted to small esteemed desires. We
know the recent reality. Its our reality.
All, or nearly all places, are places to
be rebuilt. Places imply people and
spaces. Cities are like countries: they
only exist and make sense if there is
land and people, and this (not a small
thing!) is what we want to talk about.
Because one cannot exist without the
other! And we dont usually talk about
both as if they were one. The truth is
that both are one and only one thing.
Which is the city. Which is, mainly,
a political thing! Because there are
people inside it?
MANUEL CORREIA FERNANDES
COUNCILLOR FOR URBANISM, CMP
(PORTO MUNICIPALITY)
Marta Braga
130/month
Marta shares a house with six more people, where she has lived for 5 months.
She receives less then 180 per month from the Social Integration Income and
she has to spend over 23 of it on accommodation.
* Even if this rent might seem low in a global context, in Porto it is an average rent for anyone living in shared accommodation in an apartment flat.
For example, it is possible to rent a studio for 200/month , a one bedroom apartment for 250/ month. A two bedroom flat can cost between 200
to 300/month. However, the precarious condition of the people in need of emergency housing does not allow them to pay the deposit for the flat,
and the property owners prefer to put their flats on the open rental market rather than celebrate contracts with Social Security. The owners of the
Inns can therefore set very high their prices, since they dont have any competition.
DINIS SOTTOMAYOR
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Society
Temporary
Horoscope / The future of transitory housing

GUARDIANS
/ CASEIROS
Its definitely time for Guardians to

take action. The current forces of
gentrification have not yet hit the
hearts of every city, leaving windows
of opportunity for Guardians in empty
buildings. The faster they move, the
more houses they will be able to
retain. Guardians are a cost-effective
way of securing properties, preventing
them from deterioration and potential
burglary. All that Guardians must do
is get organized and begin offering
their services to the owners of empty
flats in the city. Guardians, do not
underestimate your role in the city.
And remember, you are not squatters.
INNS/
HOSPEDARIAS
COOPS/
COOPERATIVAS
Your structural principle is strong and

relevant today. The recent emergence
of open source, shared ownership
models in design and housing
typologies opens up an interesting
background of potential users. In any
way, you will need to find a way to
balance the more permanent housing
offer with shorter lettings and faster
paced contracts. This will demand
focus and energy, and you will have
to overcome bureaucratic obstacles,
but in the end you will play an
important role in tackling a problem
that is being neglected and needs
consideration.
REPUBLICS/
REPBLICAS
HOSTELS
Hostels are thriving and will continue

to do so for in the next few years.
The influence of tourism has had a
positive impact in the development
of such typology, but this wont
last forever. Consider opening up
the scope of your action to provide
longer-term offer for low-income
people who might not be just tourists
but also residents of the city where
you are based. You might feel
resistant towards this idea because
the profile of such residents might not
be what you had initially imagined,
but remember that having a socially
driven project will not harm you, quite
the contrary.
HOTELS
Fontinha
Blocks
SHELTERS
Youve worked hard for the context

in which youre working, yet there
is still a lot to do for those who you
cater for. The future is not bright for
you, there is no sign of it bringing
more public funding for shelters nor
local authorities likely to support
your activities by providing properties
and staff. You will have to work hard
in order to provide residents with
dignified conditions such as individual
en-suite rooms, access to common
areas both indoors and outdoors, as
well as psychological support and
social care tailored to each case.
Scene from the movie Lauberge espagnole, from Cdric Klapish, an excellent approach to the Erasmus experience
Domesticity under discussion: a reading from the experience of architecture students home sharing abroad
PROPERTY
OWNERS
Home sharing abroad

FILIPA RAMALHETE
Money matters should be going well

for you, Inns, given that you charge
an average of 200/month for rooms
without a toilet, and 120/month for
illegal shelters in the backyards of
your premises. And yet you do not
invest any of that in improving the
conditions of your offer. The future
brings many changes, possible
complaints and court cases. You are
likely to be forced to close premises
unless you change your attitude.
SQUATTERS
New ideas for your career could be

on your mind, Squatters. You might
be thinking not only about getting a
new house/space but also entering
an entirely new field. Throughout
your years of activity you have
accumulated knowledge that might
be extremely helpful for others if
shared. Your energy and enthusiasm
are high, Squatters. Youre likely
thinking about expanding your
horizons, perhaps through education
and starting a cooperative. You
should definitely give these serious
thought. Plan carefully, get together
with others who share your cause,
with other people who need homes
but do not know how to get them,
and take action.
Activities of some kind could put you

in the public eye today, Republics.
The alternative that you offer to
the dominant housing typologies
might well bring you richly deserved
acknowledgement. The fact that you
have started with university students
does not mean your model cannot
be extended to wider user groups.
In a world where shared ownership
is gaining supporters, where selfgoverning structures seem to be
arising, the future looks bright for
Republics, who can develop into
real alternatives for low-income
residents of cities. Perhaps consider
a partnership with some of Portos
activist movements?
HOMELESS
This is a great day to start new

enterprises with others, Homeless. It
might be helpful to make contact with
a local activist group who might give
you guidance about your rights as a
citizen and how to move forward. This
may seem like a daunting prospect,
but youll have the energy and
enthusiasm. Remember that you have
the right to have a home, according to
the Portuguese Constitution.
Its your time to give back, Hotels.

You have been taking advantage of
heritage for your own exclusive profit.
You might be experiencing full joy and
have a clear conscience because you
are creating new jobs, but this is the
moment for you to ask yourself about
the conditions you are really offering
to your employees. The future brings
new statutory models where you will
be obliged to return part of your profit
to the city that your are using, by
creating affordable housing in the city
centre, one or two minutes away from
your own location. Start preparing!
CITIZENS
Projects involving a group, perhaps

your entire community, could take up
a lot of your time, Citizens. Interesting
news and stimulating conversations
could come your way. Expect a lot
of activity around you. Expect to
take part in that activity. You could
have agency in the city. What do you
believe in? What could you do to
contribute? You will most probably
find yourself changed somewhat for
the better, of course.
The winds of tourism have been

blowing in favour of Property Owners.
Profitable day and weekly rates have
benefited those who own houses and
put them on the letting market.This
could be a positive impulse that will
last but there are other influences
which might affect your development.
The economic dynamics brought
by the banking crisis affect mostly
the local people and are therefore
lowering longer term rents. Why
not consider short-let tenancies in
the winter months at a lower cost?
And how about a longer term, less
risky, contract with Social Welfare
for emergency housing? List your
options, cross out the unworkable
types of residents, get over it and
think: what would you do if you
were in their situation?
ARCHITECTS
What are you waiting for?
Professor and researcher at CEACT/

UAL, Department of Architecture and
researcher at e-Geo/FCSH-UNL
Finding a home with the right

balance between private space
and a place for parties, deciding
whether shoes are left at the
doorway or kept on, whether
having girl/boyfriends sleeping
over is aloud, or one where theyd
have their own refrigerator shelf
are some of the challenges of
sharing a home abroad, a situation which is now typical for Portuguese students. Nonetheless, it
hasnt always been like this.
During the 20th century, Portuguese urban lifestyle as in
most European countries until
the Second World War was
rooted on a home sharing tradition. A family-based pre-industrial traditional living was the
rule, expressed by multi-generation families, often including a
relative who came to live in the
city, to study or work, and also a
tenant, who, incapable of supporting his own rent, would help
the family by paying for the expenses.
In this context, young people
shared their family homes and
lifestyles from birth until marriage and often after it. University students who had to move
away from home rarely went to
live on their own especially if
they were women and moved
in with relatives, university
dorms or rented rooms. Rented
rooms provided a respectable
environment for the young person, guaranteeing that family
values would be properly taken
care of during school periods.
They also delivered extra income to the landlord/landlady,
who was often a widow(er) with
low income. This reality prevailed during the second half of
the 20th century and to some
extent can still be seen today.
However, with regards to
sharing homes, times are definitely changing, as are cultural
values regarding domestic roles,
their virtues and vices. Space is
also changing, or, at least, our
perception of it. One of the phenomena that has certainly contributed to the changes of the
status quo has been the increas-
ing importance and scope of exchange students programs, such

as Erasmus. Since its beginning,
in 1987, more than three million
Erasmus students have spent
several months abroad, contributing to the construction of the
present European mobility patterns, nonexistent only a few
decades ago (one could wonder
if programs such as this one
have made more for the idea of
Europe than any other policies).
Within this enormous mass of
mobile students, a new reality
emerged: home sharing abroad.
Home sharing abroad can be
characterized as several students, often from different origins, renting a house or an
apartment in a foreign country
for a limited period of time (six
months to a year). For the Portuguese, most of those students
are leaving their family homes
for the first time. Even if this is
not the case, needless to say this
is a totally different reality from
the logic of the traditional
room rental or university accommodation, and the new situation represents a challenge
to be independent, a modern
rite of passage which implies
surviving alone in a different
country.
The experience comprises aspects such as the quest for a suitable place to rent, the establishment of house rules, encountering cultural differences, dealing
with conflict management, finding levels of understanding and
compromise (often in more than
one language), and, of course,
usually implies also a lot of fun,
as partying plays an important
role on the whole experience of
studying abroad.
And yet, one main aspect is
that, more or less conscientiously, domesticity is under discussion for these young people.
Sharing a home with strangers
(furthermore when they have
different cultural backgrounds)
implies surfing in new territories of the public and private
realms, and ends up being an ontological exercise, by the confrontation of different ways of
living.
Conflicts about using the
same living areas, ones property, dividing the shelf space in the
refrigerator, designating and
sharing chores and morally accepted behaviors generate (desirably) democratic discussions
and decisions.
From these challenges, a
question raises: what defines a
good house or apartment for
sharing? Some Portuguese
Architecture students interviewed considered that one central aspect for a good coexistence and an important premise
to guarantee cultural tolerance
is a clear separation between
public/common and private/individual spaces, allowing different levels of intimacy, according
to different situations and personalities. Within the consensual house rules one of the most
sacred is the privacy of each students room. Individual rooms
are taboo areas, with a wellknown threshold (the door
jamb), crossed only by the few
who are admitted inside. A room
with a toilet, and a living room
suitable for parties and meeting
friends is extremely important,
but the location of the home
within the city is also a relevant
issue. Details, such as having a
good view, a balcony, a large
kitchen or the possibility to create different environments by,
for instance, opening or closing
a door or window are also extremely valued, and seem to
make the difference between
boredom and an identifiable
place, remembered by all.
Besides improving each individual life changing experience,
home sharing abroad is clearly a
new movement for Portuguese
students, contributing to the
overall generational shift in
home experiences and raises
questions and hopes for the future to come, with regards to
residential patterns and the
breaking down of cultural barriers. Even if the parents home
remains as the fallback shelter,
when jobs and relationships fail,
home sharing abroad has
opened a whole new world of
more contemporary, temporary
and diverse ways of living, less
centered on the stability of family ties. In this context, the importance of architecture gains
new shapes, since what really
matters is not sharing a cozy
family environment, often
dreamed and set up by the older
generations, but finding a house

or apartment that is versatile
and unique enough to encompass both individual lives and
the sharing of good memories.
*This chronicle is inspired by research currently being undertaken at

CEACT/UAL and DINMIACETIUL, Lisbon.
The urban development of the

city of Porto is seen as both centripetal and centrifugal. The condensed medieval city was ripped
apart by the streets opened in the
18th century, accordingly to Joo
de Almadas strategical plan to
expand the territory to the north.
The interior of city blocks had
always been considered unhealthy. Fontinha is one of these
blocks, but of unusual size: it is
too big and with a topography
which is very hard to overcome.
It is also one of the only places
where it is possible to have a
panoramic view over the city all
the way to the sea.
Throughout the years, many
interventions were thought for
this block but none of them ever
reached completion.
A winning project of an open
competition for the area had its
works started but was never finished. From this project only the
social housing was built, leaving
the social programmes such as
panoramic gardens, sports
equipments, students housing, a
kindergarden, a parking lot and
the idea for the factory to house
a temporary artistic residence, a
business incubator, a multicultural centre, forgotten and left
aside from its main function.
In the recent past the abandoned public school from the
block became a culturally active
squat called Es.Col.A (Self-manage Collective Space), but due to
political issues it was closed.
JOANA COUTINHO
10
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Informal
Informal
Project Monte Xisto
It is not about being good, it's about producing an effective change
Informal beyond the hype
Requalification of an informal neighbourhood in Matosinhos

This project aims to consolidate the slope of Monte Xisto. A new gabion wall is proposed to
regenerate the area which was affected by landslides in 2005. The proposal stems from the
site, through intervening in the public space to create new accesses between the top and
bottom of the hill. It is proposed that some houses will be demolished, those whose structure
11
is unsuitable for conversion, and new houses will be created close to their original location to
rehouse the families affected. The debris from the demolished houses will be used to create
new public structures, both functional and symbolic features.
PAULO MOREIRA
ATELIERMOB
After visiting Monte Xisto, one experienced journalist of a daily newspaper used to interview and write about
what is referred as Portuguese Architecture, asked us: what are you
doing here?
Its a curious question because it reveals the walls of the castle that architecture has built around itself not
just Portuguese architecture, but also
the most talked about in the media.
As a matter of fact, throughout history, there have always been architects working in this type of context
and specialized media have gone
through waves of either giving it more
or less visibility.
However, over the last years, architecture underwent an extreme period
of mediation. Its broadcasting has become massive and its image a propaganda tool for the neoliberal world
rich, happy and spectacular a world
everyone should aspire to. The several crises that occurred, specially
the ones related to sovereign debt,
shook the illusion that the world was
heading to peace and welfare. The

referenced mega-projects were gradually suspended or deviated to reserved areas in which the real estate
bubble was still alive, from the Middle
East to Asia realities seen as distant
as unstable.
Using the same tools of promotion,
a new reality of newsworthy projects
emerged. Later then other countries
from the south of Europe, this is also
having an effect in Portugal.
In Matosinhos theres a lot to be done.
Not only in Monte Xisto but also in
Bairro dos Pescadores (Fishermans
Quarter), in Gates or in Monte de Espinho as we have diagnosed in the section Informal Matosinhos further on.
Monte Xisto, the neighbourhood chosen by Paulo Moreira to work on and
set up an intervention, has a symbolic
burden that illustrates well the transformations over one century of housing in Portugal. From the history of
farms with feudal labour relationships, to the conquest of a plot to build
the dreamed house, to the tension
with the state around the conflict with
law and planning. Moreover, in the
particular area of Monte Xisto Paulo
Moreira studies, the retaining of un-
PAULO PIMENTA
stable lands by the demolition of some

constructions as an urgent need. His
work and the work of the photographers Nelson DAires, Paulo Pimenta
and Valter Vinagre, is also useful to
shed light on the problem and trigger
a process with the public powers that
we would like to be irreversible.
On the other hand a wider urban in-
tervention engaging all the neighbourhood, should also be planned by

starting from the organization of its
inhabitants in a structure that may
represent them. A neighbourhood association that may go beyond the conflicts over the plots, increase the capacity to speak out and establish itself
as a major force in decision making. A
democratic process with qualified

technical support will assist in generating the residents own decisions
about the necessary public space,
streets and gardens, being aware that
rooting a participant and democratic
culture doesnt put at stake or take
away responsibility from the technician or the council. Instead it reinforces and qualifies the transformation
process.
In a time when these professional
practices are at the forefront of the
media frenzy it is important to maintain clear its objectives, not allowing
the undermining or glorification of
these practices. Like thinking the
comfortable idea that architects do
good and categorizing it as charity
as Z izek explains in his essay First as
tragedy, then as farce (Verso, 2009).
It is not about being good, its about
producing an effective change.
These three editions on Informal
wouldnt be possible without the help
and availability of the inhabitants and
the Matosinhos municipality from
architects to politicians. Now, the possibility to make the effective change is
in their hands. It may be used, developed and spread. Or forgotten about.
PROJECT BY PAULO MOREIRA / IMAGE BY PROMPT
Matosinhos
what's
left
after
the
reconversion
The inclusion of a bottom-up decision instrument in the planning process
JOO QUINTO
TOP New public playground, walkable gabion wall and symbolic structure made with debris from the demolished houses. BOTTOM Retaining gabion walls and new public basketball court; Three new
incremental houses, ranging from 1 to 3 bedrooms IMAGES BY PROMPT
Portuguese laws for the reconversion

of illegal settlements introduces social
organization in transparent processes
as a way to empower the people to decide about their land: its parcelling
and its ownership are decided within
the owners circle. In Matosinhos, the
illegal population have, together with
proactive municipal services, produced very good results in a dynamic
and inclusive practice to overcome illegality.
It has shown that the same people, who
brought chaos to the territory with their

illegal urban areas, were just seeking for
order to make a living; the informal becomes formal and reveals the social aspects of the urbanization, otherwise generally hidden behind the profitable and
urban design ones.
This is by no means a lateral aspect of
todays urban problematic, as we all seek
for the attractiveness of our territory and
achievements of civilization; and in practical terms, also for a way to finance urban
qualification or growth. Only the People
can do the trick, through the sum of differentiated activities that produces urban
amenities an always hard to catch or to
Matosinhos
is a real world
experiment
(...) and it tells
us that it
might just
be possible
predict the pearl of the territory.

This brings us to a proposition: the inclusion of a bottom-up decision instrument in the planning process, complementary to the classic top-down planning methods, dictated by superior interests. This could be made with the rules of
organization of civil society, like the ones
found in the Portuguese law for the reconversion of urban illegal areas. Within the
limits of a given plan, the obligations and
profits, but also life expectations, could be
consciously supported by the community
and land owners, in association with public authorities and investors; providing a
territorys collective and plural construc-
tion, and perhaps some kind of factual influence over urban amenities.
The reconversion of illegal urban areas
in Matosinhos is a limited social and territorial experience, and may not be universal; people in need are predisposed
to overcome their situation, but people
looking for a better place may not be interested in such process, where money, time
and effort is required; and also, we must
not forget bottom-up decisions make topdown ones much harder.
But in the end, Matosinhos is a real
world experiment with the numbers to
show for, not simply a fancy project; and it
tells us that it might just be possible.
12
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Informal
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
13
Economy
Giving the floor

to local residents
JOO QUINTO
Head of the Urban Planning Division
Illegal urban
areas in
Matosinhos
- Outcomes
Amongst the residents of Monte Xisto the atmosphere

was calmer and there was more camaraderie
ATELIERMOB &
PAULO MOREIRA
photos PAULO PIMENTA
As a child, Olinda moved to Matosinhos
with her parents. Initially she lived in
Cruz de Pau and later moved to Monte
Xisto where she stayed for 40 years. She
rented a house belonging to the family
of Sr. Serafim Parada (interviewed in
the 1st edition) and, in the house next
door, which was also owned by the same
family, lived her mother (and later, her
son). Her daughter lived in an annex
built by her husband, with a room, kitchen and bathroom, and this was where
her first granddaughter was born.
Olinda became a widow about 30 years
ago, after which she re-married to Jos
with whom she lived in Monte Xisto until
2005, prior to being relocated by the Matosinhos City Council (C.M.M.). They
were re-housed because her home became structurally unsound following
the demolition of some houses situated
immediately below on the hillside.
At the Gates council estate, Olinda
and Jos were initially housed in a 2nd
floor apartment, but at their request
were moved to a ground floor flat, as Jos
has health problems that prevent him
from climbing stairs.
Retired, Olinda likes to sing fado in her
spare time. Before she worked in textile
manufacturing and in the canning industry. In those days it was like this: we
would go and work for whoever paid more
and I would adapt to any kind of work,
says Olinda. She also tells us that she has
gotten used to living in Gates, even
though she went through a difficult period
of adjustment. The biggest problem of the
neighbourhood where she now lives, she
explains to us, is the lack of public transport. Jos complains that this here is a
disgrace, we have no ATM, no pharmacy,
nothing. Its a village. We are stuck in a village. Olinda agrees: Amongst the residents of Monte Xisto the atmosphere was
calmer and there was more camaraderie.
When they moved to Gates, Olinda
had hope that the C.M.M. would repair
her house in Monte Xisto, and for that
reason avoided signing a rehousing contract for three years. I would even
dream about the house, she tells us,

many times I would wake up at night to
go outside like I used to in Monte Xisto,
and it would be only after that it would hit
me that I was on a 2nd floor.
Even though they paid significantly
less than the rent they now pay at the
council estate, Olinda, her children and
husband, invested what they could in the
betterment of their old houses replacing the floors, window frames, gas pipes,
and making interior home improvements. Despite recognizing that there
are some advantages in the new apartment, they are adamant in saying that
they have changed for the worse. It was
totally different, there we were all together as a family, laments Olinda.
Joaquim lives in Monte Xisto with his
family 9 of his 11 brothers are his neighbours. Near his house, also located in the
neighbourhood, he has his metal workshop. His parents bought a piece of land in
Monte Xisto for each one of their sons, and
all of them built their own homes there.
We paid our fines and we built our
houses, he tells us, referring to the
sanction for illegal construction of housing, accepted generally as an integral
part of the process of self-construction.
Joaquim started to work in the garage
of his own house, and later built his workshop. The majority of his clients live in
Monte Xisto, but he also gets a lot of work
from other places from around the north
of the country. He works with his two
sons and states not to have any reason to
complain when it comes to the crisis in
the construction industry: I always have
a lot of work. I try to do my best and so
people come to me. I work with stainless
steel, aluminium, wrought iron all sorts
of things, he tells us.
Despite this, he explains that in the
event of having to move the workshop
somewhere else, he wouldnt be able to
bear the costs. He prides himself in never
having had to ask for a loan to build his
house or workshop: We made it all with
the money we earned. Joaquim reinstates that even though their houses have
an illegal origin, he has always paid his
taxes. When it comes to the ongoing legalization process of some of the houses
in Monte Xisto, he seems pleased and reveals he has stepped forward: I already
have drawings made by an architect and
I will present them to the authorities.
VALTER VINAGRE
RESIDENTS BIOGRAPHY
Olinda Silva
(Porto, 1948)
Olinda was born in Portos parish
of Foz and lived in Monte Xisto
for 40 years, first at her parents
home and then, after marrying
at the age of 17, in a house that
was rented from a neighbour.
After the landslides of 2005,
she was relocated to the council
estate of Gates, where she lives
with her second husband Jos.
Olinda, presently retired, worked
in the textile manufacturing and
the canning industries. She likes
singing fado in her spare time. (TOP)
Joaquim Alves
(Matosinhos, 1950)
Joaquim built his house in Monte
Xisto after the April 25th 1974
revolution, when he came back
from Angola. He is married
and lives with his wife and one
of his three sons, the only one
that is still single. He started
out working as an electrician
and then he worked at a gas
station, in Lea do Balio. Later
he decided to specialize in
metalwork and set up his own
business in a workshop, built by
himself, near his house. (BOTTOM)
VALTER VINAGRE
Informal Portugal /ateliermob
ATELIERMOB
Wonder Years
Matosinhos city hall
ATELIERMOB
ATELIERMOB
ATELIERMOB
BAIRRO DOS PESCADORES
GATES
MONTE DE ESPINHO
PRAIA DE ANGEIRAS
The construction of the fishermans quarter

began between the 1930s and 1940s. Later
it was expanded with new buildings in an
operation promoted by the Housing Financing
Fund, which gave it a more formal set up in
terms of organization. However, over the years
and despite the strong original structural
design, extensions were made to the houses
either because families grew or because
the renting of those spaces brought a more
reliable source of income. The informal
way in which this process occurred, deeply
rooted till the present-day, lead to serious
problems concerning access routes for
fire trucks or ventilation problems in some of
the constructions and in the neighbourhood
in general.
The neighbourhood is mainly owned by the
Social Security Institute, even though some
sales to inhabitants have been registered,
according to information from the city council.
The European importance of its harbour and

adjacent reserved areas for heavy load transport
and logistics make the territory of Matosinhos a
key point for conflict between national interests
and local and urban development.
In Gates there are three hubs/islands identified
as having illegal origin in the middle of a huge
reserve area for the logistics platform. These
hubs, with no names to differentiate them even if
far from one another, connect at times with other
urban contexts. With no hope of being integrated
in a coherent territory, these three hubs keep
on resisting within a reality adverse to urban
practices and in which territorial management is
shared between the city council and the harbour
administration an institution not really fit for
this purpose.
It is another area of conflict. This time between

pre-existing structures of informal origin and a
vast commercial area. The dominating aspect of
these commercial areas that impose themselves
on the land, with their branding and generic
design, is well visible in the way we can tell them
apart from the existing constructions in Monte
de Espinho. Not only in urban landscape but also
in the new road infrastructures doubling roads,
creating intersections, viaducts and large-scale
highways. Embedded between Petrogals security
perimeter and national ecological reserve areas
that allow the existence of some urban vegetable
gardens for its residents and these new vast
commercial areas, this territory is unwoven.
For the future its important to understand if
the post-boom of these commercial areas, such
as in other places, will bring the ruin of these
infrastructures and if what remains in these
areas are only the resilient pre-existing
informal ones.
Developed in the context of the SAAL projects

by architects Adalberto Gonalves Dias and
Antnio Rocha Gonalves Dias, we found
records of the beginning of the operations
in February 1976. The approximately three
hundred dwellings had as basis a, carefully
drawn, single family detached typology.
This neighbourhood went through a struggle of
more than 30 years until its legalization, which
finally happened in 2007-08, even if very few of
the houses maintain their original design.
With an exceptionally privileged proximity to
the sea, coast and beach, public spaces are yet
to be resolved, namely the main square that
was been completely abandoned as pictured
in the image.
urgent intervention
he Informal as a theme has

become trendy: be it in space
appropriation in a certain
Frank Sinatra's I did it my
way, or in the attractiveness
of naf urban materializations. Besides these no less
important aspects, reality is
tough. The informal urban settlements
reflect a population in need. They are
poor, and without the satisfaction of
these basic needs poverty turns into
misery, in a cycle of degradation of the
human condition. It is necessary to act.
The Municipal politics and services
have been dedicated, since the late seventies and early eighties of the past century, to the reconversion of illegal urban areas in Matosinhos. In the 80s,
the municipality sided with the people
in a hostile legal context, to the point
that some of the criticized practices
were introduced into the law, enacted
later in 1995; in the 90s, given the precarious situation, illegal urban areas
were provided with infrastructure services, and the costs were only attributed upon legalization. By 2001, 60 % of
these areas were legalized, but problems with financing stopped the process. From 2005 onwards, with the financial problems solved, the project
took on a didactic approach, and the
population learned the law by anticipation, with its living together rules,
thus providing social empowerment.
Strong political support attuned to the
technically feasible gave the process
visibility and institutional strength.
And a lot of hard work, making it difficult to count the number of meetings,
phone calls and field visits, explaining
always the same lullaby, whilst documenting every bit of information.
The outcomes are reassuring: from
1985 until 2005, 230 illegal urban areas had been reconverted. Results from
applying the new principles, after 2005
were the emission of 116 reconversion
titles in 5 years. A completion rate of
over 55 % compared to the previous system. So far, 359 reconversion titles
have been issued, 89,3% out of a 402 illegal areas universe. Matosinhos has
185,000 inhabitants, it is estimated
that 10% still live in these areas.
But these facts should not hide the
deficient urban areas Matosinhos has
inherited. They grew faster than lightning, escaping control and municipal
supervision through a disperse territory, served by a pre-installed nourishing urban condition. The result cant
be anything but imperfect, chaotic and
poor. It requires yet more effort by the
Matosinhos Municipality.
Services have already published a
Municipal Local Plan for one of the biggest illegal areas. Now, several measures are taking place in the Municipal
Master Plans revision, in order to qualify them. Ironically, the housing is not
as bad as the urban environment. Portuguese people have a longstanding tradition in house building. Combined
with the fact that the majority of illegal
areas are on the boundary with rural
land, planning opportunities emerge.
The idea is to blend these areas with rural places, and to rehabilitate the soils
to improve production and promote
good agricultural practices, in order to
explore low density housing and good
environmental quality, exploring also
the relative closeness to roads that lead
to regional centres after all Matosinhos is a quintessential urban fringe
county. But this is a plan, and still far
from territorial inclusion. For now, we
have to hold on to the trendy side of informal places, in the knowledge that if
nothing is done these populations may
fall deep into poverty.
Quotes by children about demolished places at Quinta da Vitria. This one talks about shared water supply (PROJECT AND PHOTOS) SOFIA BORGES, ARTIST
Lets get less trendy and become more insurgent. Not so sexy and be more conflictual
Participation is the
new black
JOANA
PESTANA LAGES
Architect and urban researcher
Informal urbanism is usually

associated with the Global
South. Despite this, Southern
European countries have struggled for decades with urban regeneration of self-produced settlements. The spatialisation of
these territories in Greater Lisbon, done in 2009 within the
context of a research project,
shows that 12% of the urban or
urbanised land has informal
genesis. So we are not talking
about a small number.
In this text we opt for the terminology of self-production,
rooted in the lefebrvian concept
of the production of space, instead of the vague informal, too
imprecise to became operational. Well focus on the miraculous procedure of transforming
informal into formal; the holy
grail of participation. Arriving
as a counter-hegemonic position against rationalist forms of
modern urban planning, its aim
was that all citizens, especially
those representing a minority,
could have a voice in shaping
territories. Participation is almost like informality. The
term has been so broadly used
that we need to fill these buzzwords with content, since both
terms are unsatisfying. This
isnt being picky about words;
making a statement on what you
call a thing reveals a great deal
on how you relate to it. As in other recent urban transformations, in self-produced territories participation is the new
Map of Quinta da Vitria built collectively by its inhabitants, central piece of the exhibition that took
place in the neighborhood. Darker areas represent evictions (PROJECT AND PHOTOS) SOFIA BORGES, ARTIST
black. From the favelas of Rio

to the slums in Mumbai, passing through the turkish gecekondular or the argentine villas, all upgrading programs include a certain degree of dwellers entanglement. But are they
emancipatory? Can people
change (themselves, their
space, their life) trough their
own praxis? I have my doubts,
based on the definition of what
being emancipated means by
Rancire, One need only learn
how to be equal men in an unequal society.
Neoliberal forces have largely
adulterated participation, cannibalizing the radical content of
its initial struggles. Now what
we have is a soft, blended, apolitical set of techniques where

architects and technicians
make people draw (or doodle?),
most of the time after a political
decision about that place had already been taken. At least in
Portugal, we often see it used as
a political legitimisation tool.
Another danger of this contaminated participation is the
effort placed on the construction of consensus, the romantic
idea that (all) stakeholders
bring (all) their interests on
board and that power relations
are balanced by sticking notes
on top of a drawing plan, having
an architect as a mediator. I prefer Markus Miessens vision on
the nightmare of participation, seeing the creative potential of architects to cause tension, enabling political politics. In order to reinforce peoples right to place(making),
participation needs urgently to
redefine its significance, to become less trendy and more insurgent. Not so sexy and be
more conflictual.
By choosing conflict, instead
of consensus, doesnt imply to
forget context, but instead to
build based on knowledge, having context as a starting point.
Sofia Borges, a Portuguese artist explored the creation of local
knowledge in a project that took
place for 6 years in a deprived
neighbourhood in the outskirts

of Lisbon. She titled her project
with a quote made by a local resident: Everything we dont
know about other places, we
know about this one, announcing that we need to see dwellers
as experts.They are not experts
on architecture, so its redundant to let them do the design,
but they are for sure experts on
living there.
We need to stop orbiting
around the idea that people are
incapable of adding any value to
planning processes (no participation), or in opposition, that
people are fully capable of designing the changes that they
want to see implemented reducing the presence of the architect
to a mere translator (soft participation). There is still room
for an insurgent architect.
Final Note As I write this, the
inhabitants of Torre de David in
Caracas, Venezuela, are being
sent off to government-built
housing that lies more than 50
km away from the city. It started with 100, but now a total of
1,200 families are going to be
evicted, allowing Chinese investors to follow up the original
plan, for a commercial and office centre. Was it helpful, or indeed enough, to become a symbol of resistance at Venice Biennale 2012, only 2 years ago? Apparently not. Being myself an
urban research, I was thrilled to
see the Golden Lion-winning
Pavilion being awarded to Urban-Think Tank for a research
project on Torre de David. But
today, once again the strength
of capital, transformed a space
of place into a space of flows.
How can we participate in this?
According to The Guardian

there are over 11 million empty
houses in Europe. Portugal with
735 000 is ranked 5th by the
British newspaper.
In 2011, according to INE (statistics), there were 5.9 million houses for about 4 million households
which corresponds to 1.45 houses per family. This is the second
largest number of houses per
household in Europe. Of these
68.1% are normal residence
19.3% are secondary or seasonal
residence use and 12.6% are vacant dwellings ( unoccupied, for
demolition or in need of renovation). In addition to the 743 400
empty homes we must also consider about 1.14 million homes
which are underused.
In the portuguese case, empty
houses are considered those
that are in ruin, abandoned or in
poor condition. Regarding the
underused we consider a few different examples: houses that the
owners acquired for future use
of their children (near a university), those in the rental or for
sale market and those which, being relatively new, were acquired as an investment and are
not on the market.
Many of these underused houses have resulted from neoliberal
urban planning policies grounded in the realization of large
public programs and events. Excessive dependence of municipal revenues relative to tax income placed housing in the
sights of real estate capitalism
with an increase in the number
of households being twice the increase in the number of families
between 2001 and 2011.
The upward trend in the sales market rather than the rental market
will be soon reversed by the current context of economic crisis.
In order to think of an alternative social situation the measures to be taken by a new policy
will necessarily encourage the
rehabilitation of urban centres
and others, more radical, will
promote the demolition of suburban housing units of poor
quality. A strange play of hard
choices will reverse the widespread tendency of the devaluation of housing which could
reach 85% by 2050 if nothing is
done now.
PEDRO SILVA
Better to buy
than to rent
The Portuguese are opting more
and more for renting a house instead of buying, but still prefer
to be owners and not tenants. Is
also worth mentioning that the
sale of used houses on the market is dominant, with an offer
which much exceeds that of new
properties.
According to the newspaper
SOL, which relies on data from
the Gabinete de Estudos da Associao dos Profissionais e das Empresas de Mediao Imobiliria
de Portugal (Office for the Study
of the Association of Professionals
and Real Estate Companies of
Portugal) APEMIP, the housing
market remained stable at the
end of last year and buying a
house remains the choice for most
Portuguese. In October of 2013,
the rental market accounted for
only 43.27% of demand, compared to 66.94% for purchasing.
Moreover, it is noted that the
Portuguese are going more for
used properties. The number of
used apartments for sale is the
highest on the market: 56.81%
against 27.56% for new apartments.
ALESSIA ALLEGRI
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NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Collective
15
Collective
Summoning the collective

Probing into the real transformative capacities of contemporary architecture
MIGUEL EUFRSIA & ADOC

photos HELDR SOUSA
In December 2013 we initiated a venture entitled
Summoning the Collective, a propositional conceptual agenda that interpreted the Crisis the
enduring and pervasive concern of the Portuguese society for the last 5 years as an architectural problem buoyed by the collapse of the realestate market and construction industry and the
political vitality unleashed in by acts of urban
protest. The questions on our mind were: firstly,
how can contemporary architecture truly represent democratic life given that economic processes have more transformative power in the
urban realm than the rhetoric of architectural
ideology; and consequently, how can architects
contribute to the balancing of the productive relationships between the built environment and
Ethics of explicit architecture

Barreiro Housing
Location Barreiro / Intervention Refurbishment/Upgrade

Use Housing / Total area 11,400 m2
The consistency of monotony

Ulmeiras Housing
Location Loures / Intervention Refurbishment/Upgrade

Use Housing / Total area 3,850 m2
global capital in a democratic arena undermined

by the effects of an enduring and systemic social
and economic recession? Our endeavour acknowledged two major matters of concern. First,
given the governments ever receding social
housing agenda and shutdown on public spending, it seemed inevitable that the only effective
way forward involved the establishing of alliances with the financial market forces, owners of an
impressive volume of futureless real-estate in
Portuguese cities. However, this engagement
had to be critically premeditated. The worst possible outcome of the project would be to end up
paving the way for further proliferation of profit-based developments, feeding into the endless
cycle of boom and bust it wishes to stabilise. Secondly, we were convinced that there was a causality nexus between the struggling responsiveness of architecture to the current dramatic context and the existing schism between theory and
practice. On that account, we set out to produce
an array of eminently provisional and unstable

theoretical propositions, open to updating or
even discarding, deeply rooted in the urgency of
provoking/catalysing urban transformation. As
a result, Summoning the Collective attempts to
establish critical links between architectural
thought and the political realm, with the objective of constituting an effective architectural
agency capable of triggering the completion of
unfinished buildings in Portuguese cities, abandoned in the aftermath of the burst of the realestate market bubble.
The eight on-going projects here presented is
the result of the intersection between a chain of
speculative and prospective hypothesis and successful joint-ventures established with stakeholders (city council planners, real-estate fund managers, investment bank assessors, construction
entrepreneurs). By focusing on the engineering
of consensus and compromises between agents
that hold inexorably conflicting visions for the city
there is a feeling that we have hit a nerve. These

commissions witness the critical lack of creative
conciliatory mediation between the built environment and its agents and that the spectrum of the
architectural milieu can still be a portal for challenging the rules of the game. Ultimately, the
Summoning the Collective endeavour is admittedly born out of the volatility of the financial markets, the circumstances of contemporary life and
the prevailing mechanisms of urban production.
Hence, it adopts strategies that avoid closure and
keep verdicts open, focuses on means and not
ends and explores specific technical aspects of a
project as the foundation of architectural expression. It aims to contribute to the broadening of the
discussion regarding overlooked urban potentials
while asserting architecture as the unstable field
of genesis and mutation of spacial and material
organisations that bind the sources of political
agency and the collective in the era of abstract
mechanisms of global financial operations.
There is a vague ethical standpoint embedded in

the profession against operations whose prime
goal is extrapolating value from the urban territory. But instead of dwelling on the moral values
against the profit-driven business model, architects should be open to the possibility that the
problem is not that architecture has been ab-
sorbed by the mechanisms of the world of finance,

but the fact that the discipline has not yet fully
realised the productive architectural capital that
resides in the relations between design and the
conditions consigned by the financial rationale of
the free market. If so, the rendering intelligible of
these nebulous and tumultuous interactions can
be used as a tool for discovering creative agency

for emergent design practices. The Barreiro
Housing project exemplifies this approach that
enables architecture to retake a leading role in
urban change.
The scenario of massive and seemingly endless

replication of efficient housing typologies with
ornamental peculiarities is representative of the
homogeneous and insipid sea of sameness that
portrays the housing market. But to oppose the
conceptualization of the urban substance as a
linear cumulative process of already totalled ide-
as and processes regarding historically and technically typified models does not inevitably implicate a breakdown of the existing housing paradigm. The Urmeiras project aims to trace a path
of critical resistance that accepts and respects
poorly conceived architecture without abdicating of the necessary architectural propositional
agenda. It conjures an approach that binds together a tactic of differentiation of housing typologies with a manoeuvre of external visual effect (balcony) that enhances the spatial possibilities for future tenants.
The supremacy of the social

Pvo de Santo Adrio Market
Location Pvoa de Santo Adrio / Intervention

Change of Use/Upgrade / Use Mixed-use Development
(Commercial and Offices) / Total area 11,400 m2
Degrowth?
Odivelas business incubation

Location Pvoa de Santo Adrio / Intervention
Change of Use/Upgrade / Use Mixed-use Development
(Commercial and Offices) / Total area 11,400 m2
CrisisLess Desire
Odivelas Market
Location Odivelas / Intervention Refurbishment/Upgrade

Use Mixed-use Development (Commercial and Offices)
Total area 12,300 m2
Architecture cannot simplistically be interpreted

as a trade-off between capitalist development and
social welfare the relationship of architecture
with neoliberalism is not reduced to the polarized
stances of unreserved complacency or romantic
resistance. To advocate the prominence of the social sphere in the hierarchy of architectural pri-
orities does not imply a severance from the market forces. On the contrary, it should implicate an
investment in architectures vital role of buildingup compromises between stakeholders with inherently opposing understandings and interests
regarding the city: In order to embody public concerns, architecture has necessarily to mediate
private interests. In the case of the Povoa de Santo Adrio Market, a mixed-use public/private venture, the addition of extra volume enables the
preservation of the existing building and, ultimately, brings life into an otherwise depressed
urban social ecology.
If Modern Architectures mainstream avantgardes are inseparable from 20th century growth
paradigm and state driven urban operations, how
can progressive views of architecture emerge
from the declining patterns observed in the economic, political, urban and ecological realms? Architects should avoid the temptation of consider-
ing the meagre prospects of our financial future

as a motive for an architectural detachment from
the speculative and profit-driven business model:
Real game changing possibilities in city development are more likely to be effective when emerging from within the conditions established by the
existing mechanisms of urban production. In the
Odivelas Business incubator project, the flexible

mechanisms of economic and financial interpretation were absorbed as a potential and genuine
source of architectural power. One must not forget that the aim of architecture is to progressively build up alternative futures, not to envision alternative presents.
One important idea to be kept in mind is that there

should be no preset or automatic effect of the context of Crisis on societys expectations regarding
architecture and the built environment. The Troika enforced implementation of politics of austerity, notwithstanding its deleterious repercussions on urban subsidies and social standards of
living, do not lessen individual and collective aspirations regarding the space they inhabit. And
given the lack of investment, cities are now more
in need of architectural agency than before: Crisis
demands architecture to become a more effective
engine of transformation. In the Odivelas market,
the project was driven by an amplification of de-
sign ambition. It progressed from an initial clients intention of simple renovation to the addition of a large floating balcony to the existing
building that resolves inherent functional problems while providing much-needed extra inner
areas and as well as an exterior public space open
to communal appropriation.
16
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Collective
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
17
Politics
Contemporary
living
patterns
in mass
housing
in Europe
Ruthless Pragmatism
Santo Antnio dos Cavaleiros Housing

Location Loures / Intervention Refurbishment/Upgrade
Use Mixed-use Development (Housing, Commercial and
Offices / Total area 8,000 m2
Given the dramatically adverse context that has

halted the construction industry and the real-estate sector, the aptitude of enabling of a project,
of drawing up a commission, of having a client is
an important engine of urban vitality and therefore a valuable architectural asset. If the future
of the urban sphere seems to be increasingly de-
pendent on an architectural ability to focus on the

pre-conditions that enable it, lobbying for urban
transformation is to become a top priority for architects. However, placing the laws of the system
in the designs inception should not mean a turn
towards an opportunistic architectural practice.
It should be about ruthlessly expanding the pos-
sibilities of the architectural spectrum while

maintaining a critical stance. In the Santo
Antnio dos Cavaleiros project for instance, the
painting of the faade in vibrant gold colour is an
ironic take on the concept of the architectural
icon and intends to subvert the widespread mantra of rehabilitation in contemporary design.
Fishermans houses, 1942. Corporate States public promotion housing at Nazar Nazar Bairro Novo dos Pescadores IN CADERNOS DO RESSURGIMENTO NACIONAL OBRAS PBLICAS, LISBOA, EDIES SPN
The product of all the perverseness that urban order can entail moral too of course but mostly ideological
perverseness cities remain empty as their centres die a slow death
All quiet on the western front

JOS ANTNIO
BANDEIRINHA
Architect, Professor and researcher at

the Department of Architecture and at
the Centre of Social Studies, University of
Coimbra.
Designing without shaping

Barreiro Business Incubator
Location Barreiro / Intervention Refurbishment and

Change of Use / Use offices / Total area 6,300 m2
Utopian Redux
Coimbra Business Incubator

Location Coimbra / Intervention Silos and Offices
refurbishment / Use offices / Total area 18,300 m2
To bring life back into an abandoned infrastructure is probably one of architectures most challenging tasks. Even more so when the cut-rate
budget offers very slim prospects of producing
any adjustment to the already built form. However, despite the obvious predisposition to converge architectural thought into the modelling
Arguably, 20th century leading architects were

trying to change the world too fast. The pervasive modernist urban utopia that thrusted creative action seemed to be out of pace with societys predisposition towards urban and social restructuring. But given ever-increasing immediacy of the employment of sprouting technologi-
of shape, design practice can still have a vital role

in the urban sphere even if the external physicality of things remains roughly the same. Proposing minor adjustments can trigger other possibilities of use and attract investment. However,
it is important to reject the concept of architecture as a mere managerial facilitator of the ur-
cal advances, the concept of utopia seems to be

mutating: It is losing its naivet, but gaining
agency. As a result, todays most visionary or futuristic proposals appear to be much closer to its
prospective feasibility than to an idyllic or artificial scenario, and the concept of utopia now
seems to accommodate its etymological oppo-
ban substance: Architecture has to exceed the

role of mere conveyance of flexible space use options, and to unremittingly seek to transgress
and subvert established guidelines. It was the
compromise between these two opposing forces
that allowed the occurrence of the Barreiro Business Incubator.
site: real implementation. In the case of the Coimbra Business Incubator, the modern utopia is
already built, and the project is not about its material rehabilitation or refurbishment... Rather,
it is about the binding of design with the conjuring of tactics for occupation and investment
strategies that will enable its use.
A group of young architects sharing ideological affinities met in

Venice, namely, 28-year-old Colin
Ward, John F. Charlewood Turner
and Pat Crooke, both 25. Giancarlo De Carlo, 33 years old, welcomed them. The year was 1952.
What united them was surely
that ideological empathy forged in
the pages of two libertarian periodical publications, the anarchist
newspaper Freedom, founded in
1886 by a discussion circle that
counted Peter Kropotkin in its
ranks, and Italian magazine Volont. In 1948, Giancarlo De Carlo
had published an article in Volont
that attempted to approach the issue of housing, from the point of
view of the libertarian ideal. Colin
Ward who, decades later, would recount these events in the preface
of John Turners book Housing by
People, translated De Carlos article and published it in Freedom.
But the reasons for the meeting
went far beyond this as they were,
above all, interested in debating
the intense housing production
which, in distinctly different ways,
was taking place a little bit everywhere. They were essentially focused on debating fundamental
aspects of housing and urban
planning, namely, who provides
and who decides.
As far as the European situation
was concerned, it was clear to see
that the State, whether the democratic Welfare, whether the aidgiving, authoritarian dictatorships, was both provider and the
decision maker What this group of
young libertarian architects was
committed to questioning was precisely the legitimacy of this ab-
stract entity to interfere in such an

intrusive manner, in an issue so
close to the heart and feelings of
communities and so contrary to
the possibilities of conscious and
autonomous expression of their
housing needs.
Today, more than 60 years after
this episode took place, the State
no longer has any need to show itself as the prudish cover of the real
decision maker, as in fact the only
thing the State manages to decide
is not deciding anything. At present, when the State is shamelessly
self-effacing so as to make a better
show of the violent and inescapable determinism of the authority
that controls it, we can carry on imagining Turner; Ward, Crooke and
De Carlo in Venice, debating who
provides and who decides, but this
time a lot more ironically.
In the early 1950s Portugal, we
were still far from that kind of discussion. The States commitment
was almost completely withdrawn from the countrys pitiful
housing reality and was tangled
up in the political meaning of typological or language options. It
was committed in fact to sublimating the housing problem into
the meanders of recommended
stylistic virtues or ideologically
enforced typologies. Among
these, the key issue was that of the
detached single-family house, or,
in other words, the uncontaminated nest of the basic social
unit, God, Motherland, Family.
For the corporative and dictatorship-based Portuguese postWorld War II State, more than
providing homes in large enough
numbers to tackle the housing crisis, the most important thing was
that the houses continued to obdurately reproduce the decadesold ideological matrix of an idyllic
and moralizing rural existence.
These single-storey, tiny houses
decorated with the rhetoric symbology of regional identities
Single family dwelling as the model for the trilogy God, Motherland, Family. One of the seven lessons of
Salazar PUBLISHED BY THE SECRETARIADO DA PROPAGANDA NACIONAL, 1938.
were, above all, single units or

semi-detached at best, although
this was already an unacceptable
concession to collectivism.
Some pilot experiences in collective housing were nevertheless
carried out throughout the 1950s,
of which Alvalade, in Lisbon, and
Portos Bairros Camarrios do
Plano de Melhoramentos (Improvement Plan for Municipal
Housing) constitute if not the only,
then surely the most relevant cases. But they amount to very little if
we consider the sheer size of the
problem, made worse, on the one
hand, by the influx of a predominantly rural population to the suburban areas of cities and, on the
other hand, by the spiralling decay
of the existing housing stock, urban as well as rural, owing to the
distressing state of insolvency of
an impoverished population.
And nowadays, more than 60

years past, where are we at? Free
from any kind of typological or stylistic impositions other than those
emanating from petty technicalmunicipal corruption, we are still
merrily going around spreading
our single-family houses over hills
and valleys, taking infrastructures, networks, power and even
collective transportation through
miles and miles of municipal
roads. We fulfil our moral obligations. We isolate the external surroundings of buildings. In our individualized villas, roofs, yards
and backyard annexes, we freely
produce wind, solar and photovoltaic power. We visit every single
sustainable architecture website
and we are having a great time
with the guys from the neo-vanguards imagining a gestating metropolis in the houses still being
built in the middle of nowhere.

The product of all the perverseness that urban order can entail
moral too of course but mostly
ideological perverseness cities
remain empty as their centres die
a slow death, thanks to the last
remnants of a services sector
strongly protected by the State.
But most of them have wasted
away for good, as if stricken by a
transcendental punishment for
their absurd collectivist ambition.
Without any room left for irony,
we are finally fulfilling the approach to our utopia of social organization. We have reached out
Midwest. Even if we are overflowing from the hills, valleys and Gabion walls, we have reached our
prairie. We are the ones who decide and provide, us and no-one
else. We are free-berals.
But we are penniless
An international workshop on
sustainable and collaborative
housing design organized by the
project OIKONET, a global
multidisciplinary network on
housing research and learning
co-financed by the European
Union has just reached its conclusion. The workshop took
place at ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon, with the collaboration of two associated research centers ADETTI-IUL
and DINMIACET-IUL and of
the digital fabrication laboratory Vitruvius FABLAB-IUL.
The objective of the workshop
was to develop a cross-disciplinary dialogue aimed at finding
answers for the meaning, ways
and forms of contemporary living patterns of mass housing in
Europe. The overall housing design process has been addressed, starting from participation and ending with digital
fabrication, with the digital
tools of CAD/CAM.
Portela de Sacavm and Bairro
da Liberdade, were the two neighborhoods in Lisbon used as case
studies. Representative of the formal mass housing, the first, and a
typical neighborhood of informal
mass housing, the second.
Bairro da Liberdade is a suburban neighborhood in Lisbon
formed in the middle of the XIX
century. The site has a very
strong community; people live
together in closed yards and
help each other consequently.
Buildings are built by the population, with low resources and
using as much space as possible.
The Lisbon OIKONET workshop challenge was to expand a
house that has a lack of space.
Social services threatened to
take the children away from a
family if they dont give each
child a room. This homeowner
wishes to invert the stairs, to
have an extra room for the children and also keep the terrace.
The design strategy tried to find
a low cost solution that could be
achievable for the family.
The advent of new advanced
technologies has boosted new approaches to the process of thinking and doing. The main goal has
been to explore these technologies and their contribution to
solve real social challenges. The
most significant feature of the digital revolution is that the design
data is also the construction data.
Thus, CAD/CAM techniques enabled the OIKONET students to
prototype a full scale solution of a
small part of the design at the end
of the workshop.
Now, the prototype has been
built on site using customized
prefabricated wood panels.
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Rehab
19
Rehab
Real life barriers

Building Future perfect over tense realities
ARTRIA &
TIAGO PISCARRETA
A Jorge Luis Borges poem, y uno
aprende, or simply one learns, says
that futures have a way of falling down
mid-flight. The tipping points we identify in this article emerged as essential
tools to escape such a sad fate for the
Lisbon Skyline Operation dream.
Its our belief that spotting and facing
future challenges in their harshest
variants will provide hands on multilayered solutions for obstacles to be
overcome.
Reaching out to several stakeholders,
from diverse backgrounds, such as our
partner GEOTA [Grupo de Estudos de
Ordenamento do Territrio e Ambi-
FILIPE JORGE IN LISBOA VISTA DO CU, EDIO ARGUMENTUM 2013
In reaching the rooftops as a strategy for urban rehabilitation, one of the keys is to be found on the way up
The staircase affair

ANDR TAVARES
Architecture is a slow process. Artrias Lisbon Skyline Operation has

been trying to develop an original
strategy for urban rehabilitation
through the so-called rooftop hypothesis. While the Biennale is taking
place in Venice, the architects continue with their work on the decaying Lisbon housing fabric. Since the funding
necessary for this experiment to begin
was granted by the city council
(50,000 made available for one
years field research through the local
BIP-ZIP support programme), the architects work has been unfolding in
two different scenarios. One takes
them back and forth between the architects office, the lawyers office, the
town hall and government meeting
rooms, discussing and detailing the
legal possibilities for exploiting the
rooftops in buildings held in commonhold in order to fund their much needed rehabilitation. The other scenario
is taking place in the staircases.
For a long time, the geometry of
stairs has been a major architectural
challenge. Architects are called on to
combine their constructive qualities
with the correct angles and dimensions, while simultaneously providing
a comfortable response to the users
habits within the building or the physical restrictions imposed by each site.
Despite this long tradition of sometimes puzzling problems, Artria are
discovering and developing a different
kind of geometry in Lisbon staircases.
It is their social geometry: architects
are getting to know neighbours, connecting them and their expectations
in order to provide solutions for each
individual rooftop.
In order to reach the rooftop, you
need to climb the stairs. Staircases are
places of conflict between neighbours,
ranging from matters such as refuse
disposal to the sharing of bills; it is
LISBONS BEST SPOTS
therefore not surprising that this

space of conflict is the one that provides the possibility for urban rehabilitation. While they develop surveys to
assess the viability of their proposal,
architects also carefully scrutinise
staircases, observing the buildings
residents and their conflicts. So far,
Architects are
getting to know
neighbours,
connecting
them and their
expectations in
order to provide
solutions for
each rooftop
the technical instruments of design

have been put to one side. The drafting-table has given way to a patient dialogue with the inhabitants. Such a dialogue is reminiscent of the alternative scenario of the architects work,
leading to bureaucratic meetings with
local authorities and legal experts.
For now, it seems that the architects
work has abandoned its comfort zone in
order to find salvation in social mediation. At least, in the time it takes to hold
just one biennale, it seems as if the drafting-table still remains blank or has simply limited itself to producing survey
drawings or conceptual approaches.
Such an appearance might be deceptive.
Architecture is not a ready-made art offering definitive solutions to insoluble
problems. As we report on the architectural practices taking place alongside
the biennale, we find that we are still a
long way from collecting charming pictures of a finished output. Instead, we
can see is a form of retrieval. The architects workshop is now sited somewhere
between the staircase and the meeting
room, finding every clue that might

serve to provide him with the possibility
of performing a stable job. The mayors
backing is as important as that of the old
lady who lives in the left-hand side second floor flat. Creating such alliances is
a slow process, as slow as the architecture itself.
Reversing Lisbons urban decay requires urgent measures. Tourism is
growing at a steady and alarming rate,
threatening the very qualities it is supposed to offer. The money from tourism
and the interests that are involved both
speak much louder than the fragile social conditions of the citys inhabitants,
requiring methodological prudence for
architects to avoid being crushed by the
standards of international decoration.
Despite the urgency, we need to stay
calm. There is an affair taking place in
Lisbons staircases that can provide alternative solutions for continuing to
build Lisbon as it has always been built.
If you want to reach the skyline, you
need to climb the stairs. That is what is
happening today.
Some of Lisbons best spots are empty and yet to be found. Skyline opportunities are spread
throughout the city all the way from the historic centre to modernist Avenidas Novas.
Its our belief

that spotting
and facing future
challenges will
provide hands
on multilayered
solutions for
obstacles to be
overcome.
ente] an NGO that works in urban
planning and environmental projects
will allow unique inputs for the legal
framework, social fabric and architectural possibilities required to transform Lisbon Skyline Operation into an
applicable real life tool.
So far we determined several initial
barriers listed hereinafter.
Following a worldwide strategy of recouping financial entities instead of applying funds in other sectors of society,
governments have been overlooking
their responsibilities as main drivers
and supporters of the regeneration of
cities. This has resulted in a lack of control of the urban planning process, an
absence of incentives to rehabilitate,
either direct ones, e.g. grants, or indirect, e.g. fiscal benefits and a failure of
existing public policies on this matter.
All these factors have created almost
insurmountable barriers for the average citizen.
By refurbishing the obsolete and considering alternative options for empty
spaces, we strongly believe that with
Lisbon Skyline Operation the identity
of the city can be maintained. Its simply a way of filling the void and bringing
it back to life.
Crucial challenges to be addressed
include accessibility to the LSO project,
de-bureaucratization, standardized
contractual tools, flexible architectural options extended to further licensing, and scrutiny of the building structure, which can only be overcome with
a joint effort of all parties involved.
Utopia is only an island. What we now
need is to cross the sky to get there.
2014DIGITALGLOBE, MAP DATA 2014GOOGLE
CHALLENGES
1. ACHIEVING CONSENSUS
Whenever a building is divided in a
horizontal split a condominium arises
as the legal form of the organization of
ownership. That is, the different owners
of each building fraction in regard to its
commonhold.
The collective owners will gather in
condominium assemblies to decide
on internal affairs related to the use,
assessment and maintenance of common
areas and inherent expenses. Shared
spaces such as rooftops, hallways,
elevators and exterior areas are managed
according to established needs and
decisions made in meetings. Hence
quorums, voting procedures, majorities,
unanimities and other rulings will be
necessary, depending on the importance
of the subject.
Asymmetries in information and
difficulties in communicating ideas
frequently occur. Issues may arise while
conferring rights resting on common
areas, as the individuals concerned are
of different ages, backgrounds, cultures
and economical situations. Even within
small communities, consensus is
therefore at the essence.
2. OPEN PATHS FOR NEW

URBAN REGENERATION
PROCEDURES
Only through a brave intervention
of public powers, namely Lisbons
Municipality, by eliminating the extensive
procedures and delays of bureaucracy
can Lisbon Skyline Operation fulfil
its potential.
All necessary approvals, licenses,
technical surveys and other proceedings
should therefore be handled by a specific
channel thus enhancing the feasibility
of such projects. Depending on the
characteristics of each project different
entities and service providers may
intervene and ideally attend to its
special traits.
One of the advantages for the public and
especially for the Municipality brought
on by the Lisbon Skyline Operation
resides in getting refurbished facades,
sustainable buildings, creative solutions
and panoramic views using a costfree operation, allowing possible extra
licensing revenues for those entities.
3. TAILOR-MADE
OPERATIONS
4. RECONVERT THE CITY
The proposal of an investor (from an

actual owner to any third party) must be
approved in a condominium assembly.
Subsequently, a legal instrument a
special contract outlining their detailed
mutual obligations namely, extension,
price, length and other singularities of
each operation, must be set up.
Lisbon Skyline Operation plays here one
of its major rewards: the price agreed
with the investor will revert entirely
and compulsorily to rehabilitation
works of the condominium building
where the operation is set to take place.
Moreover, and most importantly, after
the agreed period of investors use,
all the investment will belong to the
condominium enabling the gain of a
perpetual income, hence ensuring that
there will be funds for the buildings
ongoing maintenance.
Aside from obvious legal and urban
constraints, Lisbon Skyline Operation
thereby allows for absolute freedom
to design and fine-tune each special
contract according to the specific needs
and desires of both parties, effectively
creating tailor-made solutions.
Lisbon Skyline Operation allows

creative freedom, increased dynamics
in different sectors and an ecological
and environmental focus thus creating
a sustainable rehabilitation, including
improvements such as accessibility
for people with disabilities, which is
mandatory by law.
Our vision of a simple and efficient
rehabilitation process will bring to the
city long needed changes that have so
far escaped public intervention. Specific
funding from European institutions
would obviate the current dependence
on national entities to rise to this task.
Average citizens will be relevant
stakeholders in this rehabilitation
process. Along with the reconfiguration
of rooftops, building upgrades attending
to the identified urgent needs, will be
simultaneously set in motion by the
condominium. Lisbon Skyline Operation
is not aiming to transform the citys
genetic identity by reshaping all rooftops,
but it does nevertheless claim to be
an instrument for expanding effective
possibilities for preserving the citys
diversity. Through the validation of not
only volumetric changes but also of
unobserved uses, it promotes a strategy
for a citizens culture of pro-rehabilitation.
IMAGES: FILIPE JORGE IN LISBOA VISTA DO CU, EDIO ARGUMENTUM 2013

GRAPHICS: ARTRIA AND ARMANDA VILAR 2014
20
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Rehab
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
21
Culture
Viseu: Red
Light District
Top Floor Ring
Our first intervention unravels a condominium tangle while taking Lisbon panoramic views to the next level
A building in urgent need of work, a condominium facing financial difficulties, and

a huge empty rooftop in communal property. An investor makes the first move,
determined to have a 7th floor with a panoramic view, facing Lisbon charms.
The plot is set and it is not fiction. The case takes place in Lisbons ascending
artery: Rua Antnio Pereira Carrilho No. 32. Facades, elevators and general
infrastructures need to be repaired urgently, estimated costs are approximately
150.000. The buildings rooftop is also a major problem and its repair has been
delayed for decades. In last July at the condominiums administration meeting, the
neighbours were receptive, as this proposal will fund all the necessary and urgent
works. The Lisbon Skyline Operation team is now working on the project, focusing
on both legal and architectonic aspects, for further evaluation. The trigger has
been puled to have the first Skyline intervention in the form of a house for an
investor and take Lisbons views to the next level.
ARTRIA
Seventh floor plan proposal
1.Hall 2.Living Room 3.Library 4.Dining Room 5.Kitchen 6.Patio 7.Toilet 8.Corridor 9.Suite 10.Garden
11.Balcony 12.Belvedere
Chelas GONALO PACHECO
Urban rediscovery
A talk with Monica Calle

PEDRO CAMPOS
COSTA AND
MARTA ONOFRE
Rooftop plan existent
Section aa'existent
Rooftop plan proposal
Section aa'proposal
In 1992, Cais do Sodr in Lisbon

witnessed the birth of Casa Conveniente theatre company. At
the time and despite its central
location, it was a rather seedy
neighbourhood, a stronghold for
hostess bars and ill-reputed
nightclubs. The gentrification
happened more slowly than expected but today, it is the go-to
destination for hundreds of
young Lisbon night revellers. At
the time, there werent many
theatre companies. Circuits
were closed and we belonged to
a generation that did not identify with them. There was no
funding. To have ones own
space meant having the chance
to develop a project. Casa Conveniente was that possibility.
The second space, which we occupied in 2004, still in the same
neighbourhood, had once been
a hostess bar, an illegal distillery
and a heavy metal nightclub.
Casa Conveniente is presently
headquartered in Bairro do
Condado in Chelas, in a space
made available by the Municipality. The new Casa Conveniente is a Professional theatre
and this is where we found Monica Calle. We sat down in a small
inner piazza formerly crossed by
the infamous death row, and
we talked about her new project
PCC: How did you arrive at
this project? At this space?
MC: It follows in the steps of
my latest project in the Vale de
Judeus prison. These spaces
function as a cartography of the
city itself. We are able to identify
a number of issues inside a
closed building that reflect the
citys structure. Most inmates
come from the margins. We
started working with inmates
that were being released and in
the meantime they joined the

company as actors. Quite by
chance, they were all from here.
PCC: Your work process
shows a systematic concert with
Space, the city and boundaries.
You are always looking for socially abandoned places. How
important is space for you?
MC: My relationship with
space is not limited to set design.
The importance lies in the way I
work with physical space, light,
the street The idea of Flows is
always present: from the centre
(cultural and artistic) to the
edge, from the outside-in. To
work on the idea of Motion by
mixing the concepts. Contrary
to what you might think, it is
more transformative for those
on the outside than those on the
inside.
PCC: Architect Manuel Tainha used to say that all forms of
artistic expression in art contained three fundamental characteristics: space, tempo and
motion. There is a kind of architecture in your plays, due to the
relationship with the urban,
scale, street, the social relationships. As a stage director and actress, have your ever felt the
temptation to cross the line and
go over to architectures side?
MC: I guess so. It is one of the
things I think about, my relationship with theatre, spaces,
the city, the relationship with
people, working with light
That is, thinking about what
physical space is entailed in a
project. I am not able to disassociate a performance from a given physical space. Be it a theatre,
a store, a square.
PCC: We are in Chelas, a
neighbourhood that symbolizes
an ideological project from the
late 1970s which has, in some
way, been abandoned. Since you
had never been in a neighbourhood of this kind, how do you
view this new foray? Is it some
sort of Urban re-qualification?
GONALO PACHECO
MC: For the neighbourhood,

but more importantly, for the city.
There is a valley separating the
Condado and Olaias neighbourhoods, both by the same architect
[Toms Taveira]. There is a visual
similarity but also a social abyss
between the two. A luxury neighbourhood in symmetry with a
very poor neighbourhood.
An important part of the project
goes beyond this professional
space of theatre. We want to hold
events and summon intellectuals
to hold lectures, artists and writers to paint faades. That way, kids
will realize the importance of
painting walls, of dancing Last
year, we rehearsed Rite of
Spring with street dancers here
in this square. It was incredible, a
click. They changed their way of
dancing. This space has an amazing cultural richness and diversity.
Re-qualification? I wouldnt call it
that. Urban rediscovery, rather.
PCC: Is it important for theatre and other artistic practices
to be political?
MC: Art is always political. I
cannot imagine art any other
way. It does not exist.
BIOGRAPHY
Mnica Calle (1966) studied at
the ESTC (Lisbon Theatre and
Film School). A stage director,
set designer and actress, she
has been the director of Casa
Conveniente theatre company
since 1992. She is the
recipient of several awards,
such as: Award for Best
Female Performance by the
APCT; Sete de Ouro Award for
Outstanding Dbut in Theatre
and the Authors Award by
SPA for Best Theatre Show.
Mnica has featured in films
by Raul Ruz, Joo Botelho
and Lus Fonseca. At the start
of 2014, her company moved
from Cais
do Sodr to Chelas, initiating
the project Zona no Vigiada.
GONALO PACHECO
Public vs Private. The internal dependencies of a structural system

and the necessity of an urban dialogue. How to make a window display alive. The girl-next-door.
The neighborhood of Quinta do
Grilo hosts illegal immigrants
who engage in prostitution. Women spend their days naked in the
windows of apartments that inhabit and effectively balance supply and demand for their services.
Quinta do Grilo reflects the
growth of the city in the last fin de
sicle. Assumed the paternity of
the former farm after gridded and
colonized. Results of building
houses out of the ring road of the
city according to the criteria speculative 90s. With the usual high
densities and lack of public spaces.
This neighborhood is contemporary with the construction of
the generic city defined by Koolhaas in the 1994 text. This neighborhood also became multiracial
and multicultural as in the generic city's. As in the generic city's the
most popular sites are the ones
that were ever more intensely associated with sex and misconduct.
The residents of the Cricket
Farm, now known as the "red
light district" of Viseu, want to
end prostitution that affects the
reputation of the neighborhood
and devalues the dwellings. Flags
on balconies, music echoing
through the high windows and
naked women, this is the picture
of the Cricket Farm, a neighborhood with eight buildings between the hospital and the outer
ring of Viseu.
The leader of the Association
Olho Vivo, which has provided
support to many prostitutes and
illegal citizens of the city, acknowledges the criticism of the
residents but warns that the only
solution for the neighborhood undergoes legalize prostitution.
Regarded as a taboo subject,
through the windows of "Quinta
do Grilo", we carry the private
sphere to public space causing reactions and conversations among
neighborhood residents. While
some are concerned about the
fact that this became a red light
district others with a sense of humor, use facebook to promote
some of the actors in a campaign
described as hygienization.
The crackdown has fueled the
debate concerning the rights of
sex workers placing the Red Light
District in a gray area.
PEDRO SILVA
Rundown
houses
A study of the Confederao Portuguesa da Construo e do Imobilirio (Portuguese Confederation of Construction and Real Estate), CPCI, commissioned to the
Faculty of Engineering of Porto
University, provides a disturbing
picture of the situation of the real
estate market in the country. The
study states that there are 1.5 million dilapidated houses in Portugal and that 38 billion is needed
to rehabilitate the housing stock.
Approximately 24 billion, ie 63%
of the total, account for interventions in very much dilapidated
buildings. The northern region
represents a third of the estimated cost. Indeed, the data shows a
strong inequality in the country
and the existence of places where
this problem cant be ignored.
The index ranges amongst the
278 municipalities of mainland
Portugal, between 0.18 and 5.11,
which reflects, in turn, differences and social inequalities.
ALESSIA ALLEGRI
22
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
23
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Detached
Detached
The space of intimacy in the absence of the body
The last exercise on the detached house

SUSANA VENTURA
I. In the image, one sees, firstly,

Renata, in profile, near the window
of the beach house. Then, Joey. Waters so calm, says Renata. Flyn
appears in the frame, further back
- Its very peaceful, the former
adds. And the three of them, calmly,
look through the window, at the sea.
II. Oui, mon pre est mort. La
maison avait pris le sens doux quelle
eut lorsque nous tions petits. Cette
maison actuelle par des circonstances particulires, tait un lieu de bientre et une thrapeutique du coeur.
Aussi, mon cher pre est-il mort dans
une paix parfaite. Depuis deux mois
que sa [mort] fin tait certaine, il
stait tabli dans la petite maison du
lac comme une grande musique entre
le paysage altier et le drame qui
saccomplissait irrvocablement.
Connaissez-vous assez mon pre
pour savoir combien il stait jour
aprs jour identifi la srnit de ce
site? (Le Corbusier, letter to William Ritter and Janko Czadra,
18.01.1926)
In the final sequences of Interiors,
by Woody Allen, we watch Eves suicide, Renata, Joey and Flyns mother, on a night when the family (their
father and his new wife) were at the
beach house. After the funeral, the
three sisters return to the house and
contemplate, through the window,
the tranquility of the sea where their
mother chose to die. The same tranquility runs through the waters of
lake Lman, where Le Corbusiers
father had chosen to spend his final
two months, after the diagnosis of
his irreversible illness. The acceptance of death and the tranquility, the
serenity, it brings, in both images
(the one given through cinema and
the one given through writing, both
important representations which
point to how the space is inhabited,
fictitiously or not), are revealed by
the landscape each one contemplates and the relationship established between that landscape and a
space which is interior. Woody Allen
places his characters glued to that
transparent surface, which separates them from the exterior world,
and Le Corbusier, throughout his
letter, describes a little more the
small house on the lake and highlights its eleven metre fentre en longueur, always making us look at the
lake from the inside.
Curiously, Woody Allens film title, originally Interiors in English, is
translated into Portuguese as Intimidade (Intimacy), inducing us to
think that the intimacy doesnt limit
itself to the interior, to that which is
inside something and looks out, towards the exterior, which is contemplated (not that this exterior is just
any exterior, but a space which contains, in itself, that power of a final
SECTION 1
4m
4m
Section 1
Section
SECTION 22
0
10.
10.
11
22
11
22
08.
08.
09.
09.
05.
05.
04.
04.
01.
01.
03.
03.
02.
02.
GROUND
GROUND FLOOR
FLOOR PLAN
PLAN
00
4m
4m
01.
01. Kitchen
Kitchen // Dining
Dining Room
Room
Ground Floor Plan / 01. Kitchen/Dining Room 02. Entrance Room/Living Room 03. Office 04. Ante-chamber
05.
Staircase 06. Chamber 07. Bathroom 08. Post-Chamber 09. Reflecting Pool 10. Cooling house
02. Entrance Room / Living Room 03. Office 04. Ante-chamber 05. Staircase 06. Chamber 07. Bathroom 08. Post-Chamber 09. Reflecting Pool 10. Cooling house
02. Entrance Room / Living Room
03. Office
04. Ante-chamber
05. Staircase
06. Chamber
07. Bathroom
08. Post-Chamber
09. Reflecting Pool 10. Cooling house
08.
1
The intimacy
doesnt limit itself
to the interior,
to that which is
inside something
and looks out,
towards the
exterior, which
is contemplated
SECTION 1
0
08.
09.
07.
06.
The Space of Intimacy:

a project by SAMI arquitectos
2m
FIRST FLOOR PLAN

0
4m
01. Kitchen / Dining Room
Axonometric Perspective
First Floor Plan / 01. Kitchen/Dining Room 02. Entrance Room/Living Room 03. Office 04. Ante-chamber
05.
Staircase 06. Chamber 07. Bathroom 08. Post-Chamber 09. Reflecting Pool 10. Cooling house
02. Entrance Room / Living Room 03. Office 04. Ante-chamber 05. Staircase 06. Chamber 07. Bathroom 08. Post-Chamber 09. Reflecting Pool 10. Cooling house
boundary). The meanings, attributed to the very word intimacy, do not

clarify that difference, which undoubtedly exists, between interior
and intimacy, which is not to be, solely, a difference of distance between
the closer and glued to the exterior
surface of the world and the more
internal, distant or profound, similarly to the centre of the earth, which
would be, that way, the absolute intimate space of the very world. The
difference is, above all, that of the
degree of intensity (and never that of
distance, which is always nullified in
the intimate space, or the reason
why the characters in Interiors, in
all the intimate dialogues, always
find themselves glued to the exterior surface?), which creates an interior space that may be, still, an intimate space.
The question becomes, then, how
to build a space which constitutes
that difference, since an interior
space isnt, necessarily, an intimate
space and an intimate space, in turn,
does not imply a separation from the
exterior space. On the contrary,
there seems to exist, in its own genesis, a form of contemplation from
the inside to the outside, from the
body to the landscape, which makes
the body, which inhabits the space,
contemplate itself from within,
when it fills itself with tonalities,
variations, colours, water and scents
from the landscape that stands before it. The intimacy will always be
that which the body is able to create
or compose between itself and the
space, reducing it to a sensitive surface, capable of receiving the infinitesimal variations of its colours (similarly to the great music composed
by Le Corbusiers father between
himself and the landscape of lake Lman).
But for what reason do we talk
about a space of intimacy, about an
exercise which still seems too formal, preceding the very matter of
things and the permanence of the
bodies? Undoubtedly there seems to
exist that effort in creating a space
which, through its form (that which
the project presents us with and
which results, in part, of the circumstances of the pre-existence of the
Albarquel fort) and of a sequential
composition (antechamber chamber or room post-chamber, which
Sami looked for in what is understood to be one of the first examples
of domestic architecture in Portugal, the medieval palace) corresponds to that variation in intensity,
The intimate
space is a
generous space,
without function
without utility
appearing to
exist as a gift
to the body and
the landscape
4m
through successive steps and boundaries (not only for the sequence in itself, which begins, inclusively, on the
ground floor, but, above all, through
the unfolding, or even the unveiling
suggested by the two levels of the
space of intimacy: a higher level,
whose curve welcomes and embraces
the bodies, and a lower one, with a
double height ceiling, whose limit is
rapidly undone by the ramp that
leads to the faraway horizon of the
sea, whose movement sucks us into
the landscape, as the architects explain), of an interior space to an intimate space, embracing and receiving
the exuberant landscape, which reveals itself naked before it, in its composition. Because there is, equally,
that difference between the interior
space which looks at the landscape
(and frames it) and the intimate space
which contemplates the landscape,
similarly to the plant of Plotino,
which contemplates contracting the
elements where it proceeds from, the
light, the carbon and the salts, and
fills itself with colours and scents
which in turn qualify its variety, its
composition (Deleuze & Guattari,
Quest-ce que la philosophie?).
It seems to us, undoubtedly, that
the relevance of this question is to be
found in the composition of this
space, if it is created, or not, with the
disposed elements, an intimate
space, more so than in the hypothetical pertinence of the existence of
such a space in the contemporary detached house, remitting us to false
questions of necessity, of utility, of
functionality, or still, of an experimental genesis from a cultural reading. The intimate space is a generous
space, without function (it may contain all functions in itself, be a place
for staying, a place for sleeping, a
place for talking, or even, in this example, a space for refreshing, when
it perpetuates, on another level, its
constant mutation, through a patio
and a cooling house), without utility
(a gift-space, the space which offers
itself to be just that, a space, or a
space of infinite freedom), appearing to exist as a gift to the body and
the landscape. And, there not being
a client, one may say that the landscape is the body which inhabits this
space, the body for whom this space
was designed. A generous window to
the North seeks the pine tree in the
landscape, and the reflecting pool
prolongs itself, to the base of the subtle variations of light and the colour
of the sea (and the city, nearby, the
people going to the beach, without
even disturbing it, because this intimate space is not closed upon itself,
but remains inaccessible to the exterior its only access is through the
sleeping room and, from the outside, from the natural terrain which
falls to the beach, one cannot see its
interior).
We cannot say, finally, that this
space of intimacy may exist by itself,
separated from all the elements
which define and compose it the
sequence which delimits it, the landscape which inhabits it and the fort
which shelters it even if, in fact, one
may consider and question the
thought it creates and constructs.
24
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Detached
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
25
International
The non-pritzker house
View of Praia Grande Bay (ca. 1905)BELTRO COELHO, R. (1989) LBUM/MACAU/1844-1974, MACAU: FUNDAO ORIENTE.
Absorbing modernity and the construction of new forms of cultural identity
Architecture: identity
and/or modernity ?
The place where the space of intimacy lies at the Albarquels fortress PAULO CATRICA
DIOGO BURNAY
The contemporary lesson of History
The post-chamber of Albarquels

fortress in Setbal
JOS VIEIRA DA SILVA
Situated between sea and mountain, with
the blue of the water colouring and refreshing its hoary stones and the intense
green of the Serra da Arrbida serving as
its safe harbour, the fortress of Albarquel
(Setbal, Portugal) is, still today, in the
isolation of the site, a place of intimacy.
Built in the 17th Century (in. 1643), to
protect the entrance to the port city of
Setbal, it has always lived self-absorbed
upon itself. The functions it was assigned forced it (and its garrison) to a
decorum which its isolation further accentuated. One may even state that its
essence, absorbed as if by osmosis from
the chosen place where it was built, is in
that intimate being (from the latin intimu that which is very much inside,
that which is in the most internal part;
interior and profound; that which makes
the essence of something).
Devoid of its purpose in the 20th
Century, due to the radical change in
the military conditions to which it was
dedicated, and after a moment in
which there was the thought of transforming it into a hotel unit idea which
fortunately did not go ahead -, the time
for someone to think of its essence and
thus rescue it from a sad decadence to
which it seemed destined has arrived.
That task was assigned to SAMI,
framed by the reflection requested
and provided by the 14th International Architecture Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia.
The concept from which this reflection

originated from was found (surprisingly
or not) in one of the dependencies which,
according to the material remains and
contemporary descriptions, like that of
the Portuguese king D. Duarte (13911438), structured the late-medieval palace the post-chamber, the dependency
which is in the most internal part of the
palace, accessed uniquely through the
sleeping chamber, and that, being the
ultimate place, interior and profound,
becomes, thus, the most intimate of all
(according to the etymology of the word).
Using a spurious construction a garage added to the set of service dependencies in the Albarquel fortress,
they thought of it as a post-chamber:
and made it the last and most profound
place in the housing complex, with a
single internal access.
The architectonic shape found reminds, with rare felicity, ancient apses of
roman basilicas, continued on the paleochristian churches and recovered in the
world of romanic architecture. Resulting
from a pondered choice, that shape (even
by its generous ceiling height) allows a
glimpse of a diffuse sacrality, which further enhances the desired intimacy for
this space which is, after all, the essence
of the innovative thinking underlying
the whole of SAMIs reflection, in the
context of the Biennale di Venezia.
But the novelty (and why not dare say
it, the surprise), isnt over in the originality of this architectonic shape: it extends through the replica of the major
apse onto an interior one, of lesser dimensions, which allows the disposition,
on its cover, of a terrace (or housetop,
and in the ancient late-medieval palaces) and, in the semi-circular space

which divides them, to launch a ramp
with ensnaring rhythm which allows
the descent to the ground floor.
Here, on the straight wall that sits
opposite the apse, two symmetrical
rectangular spans allow one to contemplate, in the reflected light from a
small reflecting pool a tribute to the
vast sea which kisses the base of the
fortress the luminous variations and
the decomposition of shapes caused by
its light agitation.
Which uses for this space, apparently closed, limited by a single connection to the remainder of the housing complex? Is it a waste, tending to
an economical logic where everything must necessarily possess a useful functionality?
The post-chamber in the fortress of
Albarquel is a challenge, a critique, an
innovative (and tempting) formulation: it is about finding a new space of
intimacy, one which allows a different
way of living to the human being, forcing him to look at himself and the natural which surrounds him in a fraternal amplexus.
The post-chamber: in it the intimacy
of the building is shaped and, through
osmosis, all the intimacy of the place
where the fortress is sited; in it one reviews as well, as a duplicate image in a
mirror, the fortress in its own historical
essence.
The post-chamber is, after all, the
whole building, replicated upon itself
and thus embodying all the intimacy of
a place and an unhistoric time.
PAULO CATRICA
Associate professor / Director, School

of Architecture at Dalhousie University,
Halifax, Canada. Architect in CVDB
arquitectos, Lisboa
Identity has usually been referred as being profoundly rooted in the (de)construction of traditional ethnic values. The advent of networks expanded
through empire and colonialism
based on cultural and material
exchanges introduced hybridized conditions and modes of
productions in architecture and
its relation to every day life.
Are there distinctions between the perceptions of cultural national identities and concepts of modernity?
How has this been traced
throughout the 20th century?
What has been the role of
architecture in the development
of modernism at a international
scale, in the way nations and
their imperial networks redefined themselves throughout
the 20th century?
A Portuguese who fell asleep
in Lisbon and, by magic, woke
up in Hong Kong, would not be
able to recognise where he was,
but he surely would know that it
was not a Portuguese city. If the
same Portuguese woke up near
by Macau, he could see, from the
ship, the houses along the Praia
Grande, he would then say to
himself, I dont know what city
this is, but I am definitely looking at a Portuguese city by the
sea. After arriving at the Porto
Interior (Inner Port), the same
Portuguese would feel lost
again: What kind of boats,
strange people and houses are
these? Am I dreaming or am I
awake? After rubbing his eyes,
as to try to wake up from a somewhat surreal dream, he would
then look at the Leal Senado
(Senate house), the townhall,
and feel reassured that all that
was surrounding him was indeed Portuguese. Today, this is
not so. The city has sadly lost
most of its Portugueseness.
What was either typically Portuguese or typically Chinese has
been destroyed. Today we have

a shapeless and uncharacteristic
city of which almost every attraction and picturesqueness have
been removed without a trace.
Although this text is not contemporary, it was written in
1929, by Silva Mendes, needless
to say, a Portuguese who worked
for the Government of Macau, it
has been quoted many times by
different authors as having a
somewhat timelessness quality.
The text exposes ones necessity to feel reassured, to feel at
home, by being able to recognise
and to be identified with the images of a city supposedly far
away form the motherland.
Was Macau ever just a Portuguese port city? Or was it always
interrelated to a world-wide network of port-cities, connected by
the development of colonialism,
imperialism, modernism and a
capitalist world-economic system?
Was modern colonial architecture in Macau exclusively
Portuguese?
Was absorbing modernity
constructing and celebrating
new forms of identity?
Edward Said stated in Culture
and Imperialism, that the novel
(architecture) plays an extraordinarily important role in helping to
create imperial attitudes towards
the rest of the world.
Colonial architecture as an
import of eclectic and neo-classical forms from the motherlands / cores of Empires to their
peripheries is a formal notion
that does not provide an adequate response to some of these
questions. Colonial modern
architecture also embodied the
presence of institutions that
were clearly representative and
instruments of the imposition of
social, political and cultural
change, resulting in spatial, social and racial segregation.
The first reinforced concrete
buildings in Macau, mostly private houses or small palaces,
like the white House (Casa
Branca) or the Happy House
(Casa Alegre) House in the Guia
Hill, were built in the 1910s.
These houses, through which
major technological innovations
Arch. Mitchell Greig, Guillien House, 1934. From Figueira, F. and

Marreiros, C. (1988) PATRIMNIO ARQUITECTNICO : MACAU CULTURAL HERITAGE,
MACAU:INSTITUTO CULTURAL DE MACAU
A Casino in Macao today DIOGO BURNAY
were introduced, were also social, economic and cultural representations of the paradigms of
and paradoxes of the debates
about new modern architecture in Europe but also in other
colonial cities like Shanghai,
then considered as metropolitan
cores within the several colonial
peripheries. The Tseng Kwai Iu
house in Hospital Street, designed by the Portuguese architect Rebello de Andrade, embodied a shift from the symbolic
to the functional reproduction
of metropolitan architecture.
This was achieved mainly
through the attention to specific
climate conditions by introducing cross ventilation and by the
arcade and the recessed facades, which were considered
the first passive energy architectural devices, much before air
condition was introduced.
The emergence of modern
architecture in the 1930s in Macau was not an attempt to break
with the past, as in Europe, but
a shift from romantic symbolism to technological rationalism
that still perpetuated the the
tradition of the reproduction of
European modern principles of
sun, light and air.
Decades later, in the 1960s a
younger generation of architects,
working for the government of
Macau, including Manuel Vicente, Jos Maneiras, Natlia
Gomes, Henrique Mendia, and
others, started developing urban
design projects for Macau.
These social housing projects
and the urban design for the
ZAPE, in spite of introducing
new modes of productions and of
representations of town planning and architecture, they were
still giving continuity to the colonial tradition of reproduction
and representation of the social,
economic, political and cultural
dimension of the metropolitan
cores that still prevails today, after the 1974 democratic revolution in Portugal and the 1999
handover to china, through the
globalised economic status of
Macau now embodied through a
post modern pluralistic mode of
architectural production.
The relationship of the Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira with architecture is

known by many thanks to Eduardo Souto de Mouras project
for the House of Cinema. But,
once built, that project was never used for that purpose. Instead, it is now another Portuguese Pritzker Prize Winner, lvaro Siza Vieira, that is designing the new Casa do Cinema
Manoel de Oliveira.
But beyond these two houses
there is a third one, unknown to
most, and it was the home where
Manoel de Oliveira lived between
1940 and 1982. Hidden in Rua da
Vilarinha, in the neighbourhood
of Aldoar in Porto. The home was
design by Manoel de Oliveiras
friend, the architect Jos Porto.
According to Sergio Fernandez,
interviewed by the newspaper
Pblico, this is one of the most
remarkable works of Portuguese
architecture from that era, also
noting that the size, the spatial
character of a building that has
almost no doors, and where spaces articulate in a remarkable
manner, with various relations of
ceiling heights.
Besides Jos Porto, architects
Eduardo Souto de Moura, Gonalo Ribeiro Telles and Alexandre
Burmester are also linked to that
property, having worked on it later
after the house had a new owner .
Before leaving the house, the
filmmaker made a documentary
called Visit or Memory and Confessions (1982) that will be shown
only after his death .Until then, it
is worth re-discovering this modernist work as well as the filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira.
ANTNIO FARIA
News from...
Cabuu de
Baixo
An urban plan for a huge slum,
in the Brazilian city of So Paulo, is being developed by a collective of Portuguese architects.
The Municipality of So Paulo
organised, in 2011, RENOVA SP
an international competition for
a slum urbanisation for few areas in the city. The team of Coletivo Urbano (Joo Amaral, Manuela Tamborino, Miguel Saraiva) and the office S+A Brasil won
with the project for the district
of Cabuu de Baixo, in north
area of So Paulo.
The main purpose of the intervention is fixing the problem of
families living in hazardous areas
of the territory with irregular
growing, where the people live
without minimum housing conditions. All the complex issues raised
by a project whose high rate of demographic and an urban morphological diversity, require a strategy
that respects geographical conditions and encourages the active
participation of the locals.
The urban and socio-environmental diagnosis and the technical surveys were firstly defined
in the first year of the project.
The second phase is now in progress. The team is working on the
design of the public spaces and
the housing buildings.
The project was widely published internationally and was
selected to integrate various exhibitions and seminars in Brazil
and Portugal. Recently, it was selected for the exhibition Tanto
Mar Portugueses outside Portugal, at Centro Cultural de
Belm in Lisbon.
http://www.coletivourbano.org/
MARTA ONOFRE
26
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Rural
Rural
From unexplored territory to a test base for new sustainable living
(Not just) a place for the old

PEDRO CLARKE
With the hindsight of two editions, and
having had the chance to visit the exhibition itself, it becomes even more interesting to consider rural space as the last
(and first) frontier for architecture.
Whilst before to the Biennale, Rem
Koolhas had express his ambition in
exploring the countryside, for in his
own words: Only 2% of the earths
surface is occupied by cities, and As
architects, if we dont look at the countryside, we are ignoring 98% of the
world which seems a bit irresponsible. the Biennale itself reverted once
more to the comfort zone of the architect, the city. OK, there was the occasional glimpse of what plans people
once had, or are having for this rural
world, such as the mention in the British Clockwork Orange of the Garden
Cities, but the vast majority of the pavilions and exhibitions ignored this
topic all together.
This comes at no surprise, as probably most architects are still being educated to believe that the architects job
is in the city. Yes, we all dream of designing a single family house in an
amazing landscape and with dream
views, but the reality of rural housing,
be it in Portugal, Southern Africa, the
UK or any other point of this interconnected globe, is that the vast majority
of this work is rarely something that
architects venture into.
For a long time the self-build projects of the architecture without architects was not really appreciated,
then it became cult, but then when returning back from years of emigration
some of these non-architects were
in fact mocked, but let us revert back
to a time before this one. At the peak
of the Modernism, architects in Portugal were interested in this heritage,
and the Arquitectura Popular em
Portugal, a fairly comprehensive sur-
"Lar De 3a Idade" "Old People's Home", Alvito, Portugal 2014 PEDRO CLARKE
vey of our vernacular architecture was

an important document that informed
much of Portugals architectural culture (forming at the same time, and inadvertently, a romanticism for the old
amongst much of the general public).
Today, this book tells us of the types of
houses that once were inhabited, the
structures that made up the landscape,
the construction techniques of a premodern era, or the relationships between life and work which we have now
lost. However from this book onwards,
and especially in the post-dictatorship
years, we did not venture back into a
redesign of our rural-selfs, possibly a
reaction to that very same doctrine of
the dictatorship, the search for the
modern, was to be thought elsewhere.
Despite these feelings, and as Carolyn Steel so strongly presents a case for,
in her 2009 TED talk on How Food
shapes our cities, agriculture and cities are intrinsically bound together.
One can not exist without the other. As
she points out, it was the discovery of
grain that allowed our ancestors a sustainable and large enough food source
to allow for any permanent settlements. The evolution of cities can be
tracked through the development of
our relationship with food, and its production, and how certain discoveries
(rail and the car) have perverted this
and lead to the creation of large megacities, no longer geographically bound,
and dependent on a hinterland that is
now many seas away.
In a country like Portugal, with relatively small urban centres, and a population which hasnt yet all left the countryside it is imperative that we as architects re-think and plan how we would
like our relationship between the city
and countryside to be.
Not doing so will only maintain the
status quo and see cities continuing to
grow, facing the problems they face as
they scale beyond sustainable sizes,
whilst the countryside is left to the old,
and on the verge of abandonment, or at
the very best as a space for holidays and
recreation. Rural housing as it goes,

will follow whichever trend, either disappearing all together as everyone
moves to the cities, or seeing a renewal
if theres anyone willing to invest in it.
Building more housing will not solve
any problems, in fact we hardly need
any more houses in Portugal, plenty of
houses lie an unoccupied (whole villages in fact) and thousands of ruins dot
our countryside, what we need instead
are integrated strategies (linking housing, culture, employment, and attracting creative and motivated people,
young and old) to pave a new way for
the future.
Besides the master-plans and the
grand gestures, Modernism also
brought with it small but important improvements in water, sanitation, lighting, modern living arrangements and
many other technologies and ideas
which have slowly trickled their way
down to some of the most remote villages, others still await for some of
these improvements.
Planning this new countryside, todays architects, and planners, should
continue to build on these improvements but also learn from Modernism
and remember that many of its failures
came from the idea that the architect
knew better, which sadly is not always
the case as vast numbers of glass and
air-conditioned towers are still seen
going up as symbols of progress in
many parts of the world. Many grand
schemes tended to ignore the things
that their future inhabitants valued,
and people became disenchanted with
architects. It will not be an easy path to
tread, it is one that wades into fields in
which architects are not acostumed to
work in, but if we are willing, and learn
to work together with the people, new
thoughts and new plans can be made
for a more sustainable and balanced
rural (and urban) model. And in doing
so, Architects may possibly even rediscover that their old role is still relevant today.
Granary project: the

first six months of life
MIGUEL MARCELINO
Presentation, Exhibition and Debate in vora
It doesnt end here...

PEDRO CLARKE
On the 24th of June 2014, to coincide
with the day of St. Joo and the traditional Ftes for the Municipality of vora, a
debate was held to present the project to
the general public and continue the discussion which had been started over six
months earlier, when we first started to
think about the lessons one could extract
from Modernity for rural architecture
and what the future might hold.
Despite very uncharacteristic weather for late June, especially for this part
of country, the people of vora still
braved the rain, and the presentation
was well attended, filling the existing
small auditorium at the Espao Celeiros,
one of the spaces which this project also
seeks to rehabilitate.
After introductions, and explanations
about the wider context of Homeland:
News From Portugal by Samuel Rego,
the Director-General for the Arts, Eduardo Luciano, the Alderman for Urbanism for the Municipality of vora,
and Pedro Campos Costa the Curator for
27
the Official Portuguese Representation

at 14th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, this
event served as an opportunity to not
only present the project for the regeneration of the Granary Buildings to the
wider public, but also to bring the Venice
Biennale to vora.
Part of this was a twin exhibition
about the future project for the building,
and a curatorial essay on the ever changing landscape and condition of the rural
world, confronting images from the Municipalitys Archives, with images that
amateur and professional photographers had sent in response to an earlier
Open Call, and which together has allowed to us to capture a version of the
reality in which we live today.
The debate was then opened by Pedro
Clarke who presented the exhibition
and put forward the idea that architects
must intervene in this context, being
pro-active, rather than reactive, seeking
to find ways to work, with local communities and other partners, to re-think how
these spaces left vacant, by a receding agricultural legacy, can be occupied and replanned; noting that simply creating a
This is the
beginning of
a process, the
first proposals
have been
presented and
the project will
now continue
to evolve
landscape for tourism, attractive as it may
be from a commercial context, could lead
us to a dead end scenario.
Miguel Marcelino followed explaining
the actual project for the Granary Building, focusing on the complexities of intervening in a building with such a rich
legacy, challenging perceptions of what
it means to work on such a project. His
proposal aims to layer new and old, mak-
ing them work symbiotically, transforming this former container of grain into a
container of memory and a place where
these can develop, whilst solving an eminent structural problem with the same
gesture.
Before the floor was handed over to
lvaro Domingues, Geographer and
thinker that dedicates great attention
to the rural world, who presented his
case and research on this changing
landscape in which we live and why, in
a country like ours, the terms rural
and urban are becoming ever more
diluted, Joo Soares of the University
of vora reminded us of the large scale
silos that the modern revolution
brought to agricultural architecture
and that are now dotted throughout
our landscape as a reminder of that
past, and awaiting new uses possibly
being a beacon for the future.
There was a positive response to all
four interventions, and the public were
curious to learn more about what this
crisis of identity being presented means.
However what caused even more interest, was the actual practical use and
plans for the regeneration of the build-
ing. A member of the audience, a worker

in the council, put forward the suggestion to the Alderman that the building
would be a good recipient for the Citys
photographic archive (a rich collection
on which we have relied heavily during
this process, and which we would like to
thank for their support). Eduardo Luciano and Miguel Marcelino reacted and
explained that this is the beginning of a
process, the first proposals for the project, and that as has been done up until
now that the project will continue to
evolve, and the brief refined, in order to
make sure that this building will once
more fulfil its part in the fabric of this
city and the region.
The debate is far from over, but with
commitment that the Municipality will
be applying for funding to make it a reality in the next round of UE funding
programmes, and knowing that the Portuguese Pavilion was able to reach audiences much further afield than only
those who could travel to Venice, this
project can definitely be seen as success
that we hope will continue its life well
beyond the close of the curtain at Biennale at the end of 2014.
HOW TO DEAL WITH THE MANY OBSOLETE

RURAL STRUCTURES?
After much internal debate
and meetings with the Municipality
of vora, it was agreed that the
project would focus on a proposal
for an intervention in an old
Granary building, located in the

city centre of vora. A building
which has structural problems
that are at risk, but is currently
used by four cultural associations.
This was the preferred option by

the municipality and presented
an excellent opportunity to think
about how we can inhabit obsolete
rural structures. And so it began.
28
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Rural
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Territory
Living at the
beach
A RECAP OF THE GRANARY PROJECT SO FAR From defining the brief, to presenting the
first ideas to both local and international audiences, the first 6 months were a lot of work for all involved,
and whilst the the Biennale might be coming to a close, this project has only just begun.
1. RIGHT IN THE
CENTRE OF A WORLD
HERITAGE TOWN
Over a hundred years old,

this building presents several
structural problems, including
severe cracking and warping of
some of the walls.
From the outside a profound
intervention, that will also act
as the structural rehabilitation,
is proposed. The building will
be entirely wrapped in a new
reinforced concrete envelope,
which will be bonded to the
existing walls, forming a new
composite structure.
7. LOCAL PRESENTATION
OF THE PLANS
The proposal for the renovation

plans for the Granary was
presented to the people of vora
as part of a twin exhibition that
invited people to think about their
rural heritage and the possibilities it
holds for the future. The exhibition
was mounted using the same lowcost technique (and installers) as
that which is used for the posters of
rural fairs and other events.
Mounted against a freshly

whitewashed wall in the entrance
corridor to the Granary buildings
the exhibition was visited by
hundreds of people during the week
of the Ftes of S. Joo in vora.
The exhibition could also be visited
in the evening, when many people
attended dinner parties organized
by one of the cultural organizations
that occupies the Granary buildings.
Sponsored by the Municipality of

vora, a total of 35 poster/panels
line the whitewashed wall of a
now obsolete shopping and office
Building, another type of victim of
these difficult economical times.
10. NOT EVEN THE RAIN
10
5. PUBLIC PRESENTATION
Uncharacteristic for this time

of the year in vora, rain tested
the poster technique and we
discovered that it could be used
successfully as a low-cost tool
for exhibition making even in
inclement weather.
11.THE DEBATE CARRIES ON
On June 6th the project was

officially presented to the
public in Venice, as part of the
content of the first edition of
Homeland:news from Portugal,
the official Portuguese
Representation at the 14th
International Architecture
Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
8. EXHIBITION
9. POSTERS
4. A DIALOGUE WITH
TRADITION
This new concrete envelope will

be pigmented and textured to have
a rough finish, creating a subtle
dialogue with the granite stonework
elements that are characteristic of
many buildings of voras historic
center. All doors and window
openings will be kept exactly the
same as the original ones.
The final result is a hybrid structure

that is intended to be more
than the sum of its parts. The
coming together of a centuriesold structure with a 21st century
intervention, without any prejudice
about the buildings age. It is not
about hiding the new intervention
nor presenting it in contrast with
the existing. It is simply the result
of a pragmatic and economic
approach to the problems, needs
and qualities of the existing building.
Thus, in a single operation, this
project achieves both the structural
rehabilitation of the building and
finds a way to seal it and protect
it, while creating a new image that
is neither a break with the past nor
uncritical continuity
3852'42.55"N 8 0'59.88"W PEDRO VERDE
The building has a very expressive

and spatially rich interior, the
result of the system of arches and
vaults of various types that hold
up the first floor and roof. On the
other hand its exterior is relatively
unremarkable, with no outstanding
features, and as such will not
be overprotected. The proposal
starts with this premise to change
as little as possible the interior
space: punctual interventions will
be made in order to modernize and
reprogram the entire building
3. STRUCTURAL
REPAIRS
6. MORE THAN THE

SUM OF THE PARTS
There were several meetings

with the Municipality, heldin the
Granary building itself, and with
representatives of the current
cultural associations that use the
space. The brief that developed
became an enhanced version of
what is already being done there.
The Granary will now include a
residence for artists, a cultural
cluster with six studio-lofts, an
exhibition gallery, workshops,
theater-auditorium, multipurpose
room, reception, offices, a reading
room and a caf-restaurant.
2. PRESERVING A RICH
INTERIOR
2
29
A debate held on the 24th of June,

S. Joos day, marked a moment
of reflection and presentation of
the project and raised questions
for the future of this building and
other agricultural structures which
are part of our rural heritage. (refer
to article: it doesnt end here, for
more details).
11
Beyond the frozen image of a rural and mild vernacular
Getting over Modernity

JOO SOARES
Professor at vora University

Head of the Ph.D. by design program
Research member of CHAIA (Centre on
Art History and Art Research).
At the peak of the Modern time,

whole territories were imagined,
and equipped with the most advanced machines, to make the
world a place with a human scale.
The ideas of Soviet dis-urbanists, such as Miljutin and Okhitovich speak of that dream.
More than campanile church
towers, as emerging spots in the
landscape, what we find today in
the Alentejo are lone towering
grain silos, indecipherable
their appearance not disclosing
whether they are yet living
things, or not used anymore. At
present, the vast majority of
these structures are in fact
abandoned.
The management of cereal
was a crucial issue in all countries. Strategies defined by Portugal as far as the production
and storage were concerned are
not disconnected from international political affairs, especially after the end of WW2, and the
adhesion to international trade
groups such as the OEEC. Membership of those international
groups involved compromises,
and conditioned strategies.
The landscape in the south of
the country is defined by vast agricultural estates owned by a
single landlord. From the 1970s
what had been called the most
beautiful of Estates, or The
Granary of the Nation began to
be dismantled. It had known a
huge investment, at least until
1953/1958, when plans were still
made according to the thought:
For each arm a hoe, for each
family a home, for every mouth
its bread. About the same time
as the territory had been
equipped with huge and sophisticated silos, these same structures began a journey of disuse,
until their present condition of
obsolescence.
38 9'19.56"N 749'51.35"W PEDRO VERDE
The silo is a piece of engineering

of gigantic dimensions but great
simplicity. It might be redundant
to say it, but their presence in the
landscape is inescapable. While
it stands on its solitary image, in
fact it is backed and supported by
a network it is almost always
connected to railways. There is a
special connection between machines, showing the silos like
signs that reveal the layout of this
network as lighthouses do with
the shore.
There is an iconic dimension to
the huge concrete silos, which
points to a moment that must
have been epic, and that, having
ended, continues to exist as an
aura, evoked by their silent presence. This aura is well captured in
the work on similar industrial
structures, for example, of the Bechers anonyme sculpturen, or
in Virilios bunker archeology.

In the 1920, Le Corbusier
would find the allure of the silos,
which is denoted in Vers une
Architecture (1923) , as a perfect example of the importance
of volume in architecture. It is in
the chapter Trois rappels
MM. Les Architectes (which
opens with a photograph of silos) that the famous description
of architecture as a wise play of
volumes under the light is found.
In an essay on granaries , A.
Armesto proposes a reading of
the sacred from these architectures, and says They are tools
related to the prolongation of
life in time, since, through their
mediation, the biological escapes the precarious concepts of
duration and settles itself in a
cyclical, therefore continuous,
apparently endless time: the
time that characterizes the sacred. (...) The tomb serves to prolong life in time beyond death, in
memory. In this sense, it mimics
the grain tower, and not the opposite. (...) For this relation with
time, and because life in them is
expecting, expectant, the lonely
granary as tombs, treasures,
chapels, temples. Is time anything else than the barn of the
gods? Armesto was referring to
stone granaries, and the specific
area of northern Portugal and
Spain, but the reflection can also
be offered as a reading of the
more contemporary concrete
structures, referred herein.
The debate is timely, about
what it means to inhabit the
countryside and the trend of returning to the contact with the
earth (in fact cyclic trends like
the alternative movement back
to the land were very strong in
late nineteenth century England). A profusion of fads attests
to these trends: rurban; post -rural; superrural... It seems however that well also have to deal
with the immense paraphernalia of machinery and infrastructure (that were once cutting
edge technology) that lies in
these territories, and which we
have not yet been able to figure
out how to deal with or rather,
inhabit.
The rural dwelling that is considered here is the dwelling of
the landscape, and it summons
Heideggerian notions on the act
of building. One inhabits a rural
landscape, which is beyond the
frozen image of a rural and mild
vernacular, consisting of strata
with successive layers of agricultural crops adding to one another, and co-inhabiting with aqueducts and levees, agricultural
warehouses, railways, and silos.
Scholars specialized in the industrial heritage have considered these structures for long:
they are abandoned areas
needing re-significance. Many
equipments: milling; slaughterhouses; cork factories, are now
targets for reprogramming and
noteworthy reuse. Silos also fall

in this category, even though the
particular form of these large
vertical cabinets lends little to
architectural space.
But inhabiting such structures as silos does not necessarily mean converting them into
residential towers within which
to live. Inhabiting the silos might mean to take use of
what makes them monumental,
of their enormity, of their
height! To place oneself upon
the shoulders of these giants, using their tops to siting new places. It could be a way of getting
over modernity. And to inhabit
the landscapes that can be seen
from the top of these silos ,
would be to find ways to reframe
or, at least to make these erected
landmarks visible, as solitary
watchmen, or as towers embedded in apt urban structures, like
the outlook towers conceived by
Geddes.
At the same time the railway
connection structures lay in a
state of abandonment, and are,
a heritage also in need of care.
Taking up the suggestion of
the sacred as convened by A.
Armesto, the now empty interiors of the silo can serve as precious deposits for tangible and
intangible heritages, which,
while existing scattered, are
searching for a place to live: seed
banks; location archives; of cultural legacy. The potential uses
that can be found for these giants in recognizing their symbolic dimension of temples,
guarding valuable testimony,
may also trigger a possible reuse
or reinterpretation of the networks that connect them.
As a merely artistic gesture,
one can think of the suggestive
image of a silo being refilled
with Ai Weiweis Sunflower
Seeds, from the remote Jingdezhen, after having already
inhabited a converted former
electric power plant! Alentejo silos rescued by porcelain seeds
coming from the other side of
the world.
The genealogy of traveling to

spend your free time away and a
simple model of the tourist areas
of the Mediterranean map the
change of tourism in Algarve
since 1962, skirting a deformed vision for tourism concepts, created
over decades by business models,
traditions and scientific studies.
The image of a traditional Algarve,
inhabited by happy people living in
harmony with nature and destroyed by tourism, does not seem
to correspond to reality, but dominates many speeches, popular or
highbrow, more based on personal
opinion rather than actual data. The
longing for unspoiled beaches to be
enjoyed by some privileged visitors,
served by the poor and authentic
Algarvio, is discredited.
At Ilha de Faro 1 or Barreta,
the main housing core doesnt
have a fishing tradition anymore,
today it is mainly a bathing beach
for visitors. Apart from some scattered cases, there is still, to the
west, a small gathering of huts
which are permanent homes for
fisherman, some of them made of
clay and mud construction, others
the majority of boards and battens, with vegetation growth and
even a few with tiles.
Luigi Dodi does not rest on the
idea that the simple circumstance that this sand strip is so
close to Faro is sufficient reason
to increase its value as an expensive development spot. He reminds us of an unhappy solution,
the camping site, that has a kind
of similarity with a concentration
camp (DGSU, 1966: 168). In 1972,
by ministerial dispatch, the feasibility plan for the urbanisation of
the Anco island, Faros main seaside resort, was approved.
With regards to the camping site,
more than assuring its daily function, putting into action different
types of activities and events, is also
a place to live all year long, maintaining its communion with the
surrounding area, fact which was
unexpected and proved that projects with better enforceability and
quality are those who study and
consider the emerging situation as
unique, because they take into consideration local issues such as population, its culture, the real need for
it, the project function, the comfort
and the materials available.
Algarve is the territory where
Democracy assumes the consequences of equality and in which
there is no possible escapism. The
dispersion and concentration of
the lodging and accommodation
starts because of to the gregarious habits of the mass of holiday
makers (Brunner, 1945: 11) and
spreads in successive radiuses
from the Faro airport, located in
Ria Formosa, amongst the islands.
1 The so-called Ilha deFaro is in
fact now a peninsula (Anco), but
it was once an island.
PEDRO VINCENTE
30
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Interview
31
Interview
THE 6 ARCHITECTS EDITORS RESPOND TO 3 QUESTIONS ON MODE RNITY ABSORBED IN PORTUGAL AND THE PROJECT HOMELAND
The growing
symptom of
transience requires
an architectural
solution, and
that solution
does not comprise
design only
Informal
neighbourhoods
are, probably,
the spaces
where architects
are most needed
nowadays
Mariana Pestana
Ateliermob
Temporary Theme / with LIKEarchitects
The modern Project is very

atypical in Portugal. Can
we see this present moment as
continuity or as a kind of break
away from modernity in Portugal?
Can architecture (somehow) be
an agent of modernity?
The big projects and strategies of
modernity lose relevance in an everchanging world. Perhaps the project
now is not to have one strategy but
many tactics that respond timely to
the rapid change of circumstances
and challenges.
In the theme that you have

been editing is there any
opportunity for architecture? Is it
possible to see architecture beyond
design and typical commissions?
Is it possible for a different kind of
engagement between architecture,
architects and society? Are
architects out of the issues of policy
and territory? Is that architecture?
DINIS SOTTOMAYOR
The theme of the transitory brings a new

field of exploration to architecture, one
that entails design but also a mediation
between property owners, politicians, residents and other stakeholders involved in
the management of real estate property.
Is there a kind of summary/

conclusion that you can
make for this project/theme?
In the face of the emergence
of shared ownership and open
source models of property and
Informal Theme / with Paulo Moreira

production that are gaining
relevance beyond the field of
design, through platforms such as
Kickstarter defining collectively
the objects and services that are
being produced, through alternative
accommodation services such as
Airb&b, through Creative Commons
licenses that facilitate the sharing
of property rights, we seem to live
in a society that is interested in
understanding and building their
environment collectively. In such
a society, architects must revise
their role. The growing symptom of
transience requires an architectural
solution, and that solution does not
comprise design only. It demands an
engagement of the architect
with a wide group of individuals,
an involvement of the architect as
a crucial player within the different
forces that shape cities through the
development and management of
the built environment.
The modern Project is

very atypical in Portugal.
Can we see this present
moment as continuity or
as a kind of break away
from modernity in Portugal?
Can architecture (somehow)
be an agent of modernity?
Due to a specific political situation
during the XX Century, in Portugal,
when two people speak about
modernity we are never sure if they
are referring to the same thing.
Portugal is living under an extreme
situation, we are not sure if
architecture may be an agent of
modernity but we are committed
that it may be part of a turning point.

been editing is there
any opportunity for
architecture? Is it possible to
see architecture beyond design
and typical commissions?
the work to be effective, architects,

citizens and state representatives
must change their relationship with
each other.
PAULO PIMENTA
Is it possible for a different

kind of engagement between
architecture, architects
and society? Are architects
out of the issues of policy
and territory?
Is that architecture?
Informal neighbourhoods or
settlements are a part of the
territory and are, probably, the
spaces where architects are most
needed nowadays. So, in order for

Participatory processes and effective
changes take time. The Biennale's
process worked as a plunger for
Paulo Moreira's project at Monte
Xisto. During these months, a synergy
was created between all. We do
sincerely hope that it continues to
be developed.
From ateliermob's point of view,
the challenge of being editors of
the Informal section took us to
research on what has been written
about Clandestinos and it's
condition on the real map of housing
in Portugal. That research has just
started and we are pretty sure that
it won't stop.
32
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Interview
33
Interview
By expanding
the aptitude
of designing ways
of living together
we are, in fact,
enabling architecture
altogether
What is typical
in modernity?
Flat roofs?
As everyone,
we are doomed
to continuity
Miguel Eufrsia
Andr Tavares
Collective Theme / with ADOC
Rehab Theme / with Artria

History tells us that Modernity is
empowered by capital investment
(be it private or public), however, the
avant-gardes are forged in times
of crisis. The dramatic scenario in
Portugal opens the possibility of
exploring the taken-for-granted
junctures of architecture with the
political, financial and social domains
as a path towards the reactivation
of the Modernist agency without
implying a radical paradigm change.

opportunity for architecture? Is
it possible to see architecture
beyond design and typical
genuine architectural potential. By

expanding architecture's creative
aptitude of designing ways of
living together to the crafting of
propositional individual and collective
ownership and investment modalities
we are, in fact, enabling architecture
altogether.
ADOC
commissions? Is it possible for

a different kind of engagement
between architecture, architects
and society? Are architects out of
the issues of policy and territory?
Is that architecture?
The Summoning the collective

initiative shows that the nebulous and
uncharted territory that separates
design practice from the financial
rationale imperative that manages
city transformation is pregnant with

Arguably, last decade's tendency of
importing technological and scientific
know-how into the architectural
discipline should be balanced by
introducing the opposite inclination:
In the current era of abstract financial
apparatuses, the struggle between
society and politics should instigate
the emergence of diversified design
tactics and processes that galvanize
architectural intrusion into other
fields of expertise related to the
human environment.

Is it atypical? What is typical in modernity? Flat roofs? I think this Biennale
showed the tremendous diversity of
modernity, the blurred lines of both
novelty and national borders. As everyone, we are doomed to continuity.
Architecture is an agent of life.
Im not sure if I get your picture.

Architecture is a field of knowledge.
As every sort of knowledge you can
use it in the most diverse situations
and occasions, from a spoon to the
city, only for the spoon, only for the
city, whatever. You just have to use
your brains, architecture will not fall
from the sky. Do architects use their
brains? 90% of the times, they dont.
Lets hope we fit in the other 10%.
I dont know.

opportunity for architecture? Is it
possible to see architecture beyond
Is it possible for a different kind of
engagement between architecture,
architects and society? Are
architects out of the issues of policy
and territory? Is that architecture?
Boarding Dock, Olho, 2014 ALFAIATARIA.ORG

There are no conclusions. The beauty
of this journal is being an open
process, aiming for the future. We
knew that Portuguese architecture
(as everywhere) in the past 100 years
(and before) went through dramatic
changes, having its ups and downs.
We are facing a new context and
everything is possible. Lets go for it.
34
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Interview
35
Interview
We still care about

one of the major and
mostly forgotten
or mistreated
principles of
modernity:
the living space
What does rural

and urban even
mean anymore?
But expanding our
role to work outside
the city opens up a
huge new domain
Susana Ventura
Pedro Clarke
Detached Theme / with SAMI Arquitectos
Rural Theme / with Miguel Marcelino

I prefer to think about singularities
which always come from leaps,
ruptures and holes, instead of major
processes. In Portugal, what I find
particularly interesting is how we
still care about one of the major
and mostly forgotten or mistreated
principles of modernity: the living
space. There are several Portuguese
Architects who understood it, but
then it is only the work of one,
two or three architects that I find
interesting and always beyond
the formal, functional and social
constraints of the modern project.
beyond design and typical

commissions? Is it possible for
a different kind of engagement
between architecture, architects
and society? Are architects
out of the issues of policy and
territory? Is that architecture?
Since the beginning, the idea was
to think about architecture and,
in particular, about a theme that
the three of us were (and still are)
passionate about and not so much
a desire for action. Of course, a
space was created in the space of
a journal and both are understood
as architectural expressions. It
may however be interpreted as
more of a personal reflection than,
again, a general answer towards
a critical position of our time or a
kind of manifesto from which we
deliberately set off.

opportunity for architecture? Is
it possible to see architecture
SENA DA SILVA APUD SUSANA VENTURA

It should be built.

we see this present moment
as continuity or as a kind of
break away from modernity
in Portugal? Can architecture
(somehow) be an agent of
modernity?
Architecture should play a leading
role in shaping our environment
and how we adapt and do that is
probably what will dictate wether we
build on the legacy of modernity or
splinter off at a tangent.
What does rural and urban even

mean anymore? But expanding our
role to work outside the city opens
up a huge new domain. Doing so
will require a different mind set, and
yes we need to get involved in more
policy and more planning if we are
not to be sidelined.
In the theme that you

have been editing is there
any opportunity for
architecture? Is it possible
to see architecture beyond
Is it possible for a different
kind of engagement between
architecture, architects and
society? Are architects out of
the issues of policy and
territory? Is that architecture?
Ceifeira MARCOLINO SILVA, 1964 / ARQUIVO FOTOGRFICO CME

Modernization and mechanization
of the rural world brought with
it great advances, but also lead
to a loss of jobs, changes to living
patterns, migration to the city and
further inequality, but let us think
instead about what can be done now.
We have a legacy of agricultural
structures, buildings, villages
and fields which are not currently
being used, and we have a modern
infrastructure, cultural traditions and
identity which are (at least for now)
strong. Connecting these dots will
help plan for a more resilient future.
36
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Interview
37
Interview
Architecture is an unnamed alphabet

Jorge Barreto Xavier
We went to an interview with the Secretary of State
for Culture, this is probably the first time that the
newspaper becomes very near of a real newspaper,
we are not professional journalist and even less
political experts and actually we know that since the
beginning. This inscribe a kind of limit, the interview
can be seemed as a loss of independence or infill of the
state in the project. Its not like that. We actually went
to the interview thinking that we could do the official
and bureaucratic statements in different ways and
went out with a clear notion to politic is much more
interesting out of the straitjacket.
he curatorial proposal
chosen for the Portuguese Representation
at the Venice Architecture Biennale was
a newspaper that emphasizes the crucial
role of the media in
the construction of
modernity. Through
this medium, Portugal shares with
the audience one of the most significant paths of the countrys culture
over the century, which has culminated with the expressive media visibility of its architecture.
Despite this remarkable journey of
affirmation in artistic and cultural
circles, Portuguese architecture is
facing serious difficulties in terms of
its position, value creation and internationalization in foreign markets.
In your opinion what are the reasons
for this difficulty? What changes do
you deem necessary to reverse this
situation?
JBX: I would start by saying that, regarding the Portuguese representation
in this years Venice Architecture Biennale, it is a bold curatorial proposal,
one that is courageous given the current context of economic hardship but
is not limited by the financial issues per
se. The project represents a particular
way of thinking, anchored in the importance of the media apparatus as a structuring element of the contemporary
making of society.
In the West as well as in other regions of the world, there were moments in history when the Media did
not constitute a fundamental, structuring element of social organization.
In fact, the very position of the Media
was different before digital networks
or in pre remote communication societies. But we are all aware of how communication devices have been essential for societies at the most diverse
eras of world history. The way in which
the exercise of communication was
carried out in the age of the digital has
transformed the very way in which society exists and operates. It is not an
adjectival transformation, nor an instrument at societys service, but rather an element that structures forms of
making society of being society. Using Greek terminology, it is no longer
a question of Tknes, but rather a ques-
tion of Ethos. Hence, using communication, a part of contemporary Ethos,

as a starting point for the Portuguese
representation and acknowledging the
ontological meaning of communications presence in contemporaneity to
understanding architectures representation. Architecture is one of the
possible grammars of social organization. It makes sense that, when we talk
about communication and architecture, we find mechanisms of identity
that can and should be interpreted together. Meaning that, when I speak of
architecture as a possible grammar. I
am speaking of a design exercise: from
alphabet to words; from words to discourse; discourse as a text but the full
scope of architecture as a social object
is manifested in the use of a territory,
precisely in an exercise of territorial
affirmation. If we accept this assertion, it is interesting to realize whether
or not it is possible to have paterns that
are understood as a possible language,
which would signify the acceptance of
architecture as one of the supports of
social and personal understanding
through abstract and material objects
assembled in a whole and representing
a social manifesto, a social presence, a
communication proposal.
PCC: Is that alphabet the reason for
the success of Portuguese architecture?
JBX: I have taken a large detour to
say that architecture is one of the forms
that can be used to built society, to built
human landscapes furthermore than
buildings, flats or gardens. In fact, it
can always be represented as a language exercise, a specific grammar and
it can likewise represent, within a given
Wittgensteinian reasoning, a way of
conceiving architecture as metaphysics, by conceiving it as a metalanguage
or a given metalanguage in the multiple
possibilities of human reasoning about
creating tools for thinking, for communication.The critical capacity of that
language is always greater than the object itself. What Portuguese architecture has achieved, especially in the second half of the 20th century, has been
precisely to propose languages, grammars, objects and material representations that are discourses themselves.
As a language, and this has been internationally recognized, it has achieved
a capacity for reading and constructing, a status, distinctives alphabets.
If that is so, we arrive at your question

the difficulties we face in achieving a
recognition that is relevant in a wider
social context. It is a difficult question
and one that resonates beyond architecture itself. There are specific difficulties about the planning, because one
thing is to have an acknowledged architectural discourse validated in the academic context or by great international
awards, and other thing is to translate
those awards and acknowledgments
into commissions.
PCC: Isnt there a contradiction? So
many awards amassed and then no
market acknowledgement? Arent
markets supposed to always choose
the best?
JBX: Yes, but there is a communication effect that has still not materialized. There are fields in which Portugal
is known to be a reference: cork as an
element with a range of uses in several
global market sectors, Fado as the Portuguese cultural identity, textile, ceramics and footwear as value-generating sectors, but when it comes to architecture, we cannot disconnect it from
the authorial aspect but, exclusively
speaking of commissions instead, when
hiring technical experts and service
providers, we are faced with a statutory
problem. The symbolic representation
of the average Portuguese architect in
an international context still needs to
be more valued through communication. The existing body of work on the
academic and critical levels does not
reach society as a whole, so your average Italian, English or French person
does not think of hiring a Portuguese
architect .
PCC: But they would think of hiring
an English architect, right?
JBX: Because there is a kind of prejudice, that the English for instance are
very thorough, that they are very good.
For that reason there is a very hard but
absolutely necessary task to be undertaken in order to make it widely and
generally known that the quality of the
Portuguese architects service is in fact
better. This cannot be achieved
straight away, it is work in progress,
but it is not happening as fast as we
would like since our urgency is greater
than its natural evolution. Throughout
the years and in several areas such as
designing and building of roads and
bridges, Portuguese Engineering has
been recognized internationally.
There are a number of Portuguese
companies operating in several markets because of that recognition. We
need to understand which mechanisms
we have to use to put Portuguese architecture in the same situation. As a matter of fact, it is less expensive to hire a
Portuguese architect and the countrys
architecture is one of the most awarded internationally. It is necessary to
widen the scope, to make this known
far and wide, to share it as something
natural. To turn Portuguese architecture into a Portuguese brand.
The contents of the Homeland project reveal a willingness to reflect on
the real challenges of the sector that
are the basis for a paradigm shift.
The focus is on the territory, the
symptoms of abandonment and decay which are forcing a refocus on
the existing infrastructure and a
search for ways of contributing to
real development and improving the
quality of life and competitiveness
of the country. What do you think
this representation has done for the
country, and what do you think it
said about the country? Do you believe this can be a way out for architecture in Portugal?
JBX: The Portuguese representation
is anchored in the logic of a functioning
newspaper, but the Newspaper is not
There are specific

difficulties about
the planning,
because one
thing is to have
an acknowledged
architectural
discourse validated
in the academic
context or by great
international
awards, and other
thing is to translate
those awards and
acknowledgments
into commissions.
Architecture is
one of the possible
grammars of social
organization. It
makes sense that,
when we talk about
communication
and architecture,
we find
mechanisms
of identity that
can and should
be interpreted
together
The full scope of
architecture as
a social object
is manifested
in the use of a
territory, precisely
in an exercise
of territorial
affirmation.
As the territorys
political
organization is
centred on cities,
agricultural space
is very unlikely to
ever be a source
of autonomous
power, rather, it is
a source of power
tied to the citys
space.
the representation. The work device is

materialized on paper, but the representation is more than that. In my opinion, to bring on board six municipalities
from different parts of the country and
to transform the debate and discussion
on the territory into a set of teams
working on something concrete are actions that drive the project far beyond
a merely illustrative logic that many national representations tend towards. It
is not a monographic work, it possesses
some documental elements that illustrate reality but, above all, it is a political manifesto, in the sense of building
the polis, not just in the architectural
sense of the term but also in the sense
of how architecture itself intervenes
and interferes in the very political organization of society. We are well aware
that it is so, and the grammar I spoke of
is not merely aesthetical or one that organizes space according to technical
knowledge.
It represents what society is at that
moment, its utopias and expectations.
It is a social description that goes beyond the merely visible, and since this
is a political proposal, I believe its intention is understandable: in addition

to utopia, it contains operative features as it calls upon technical and political agents to think about the present-day negative and positive aspects
of our territory. In a positive way we
could talk about the acknowledged
skills of the Portuguese architecture
and on a negative way about what happened at the coast and in the interior,
or the case of big cities and urban grids
not building communities, or how the
brand-new building fever created a
scenario of millions of unused houses
and empty office spaces, or the need
for a shift towards the rehabilitation
of the built heritage and therefore how
that reflects politically and economically on unused space. We talked
about it in Porto, in the context of a
squatting simulation ingin Avenida
dos Aliados, where we also discussed
the paradox of having many families
without homes and many homes without families. We cannot accept that
market logic prevails over a logic of
social justice. As the territorys politi-
cal organization is centred on cities,

agricultural space is very unlikely to
ever be a source of autonomous power,
rather, it is a source of power tied to
the citys space. However, we cannot
allow for a sort of intoxication over the
concept of the city in detriment of the
concept of State. Nowadays we tend to
view the State as increasingly weaker
and the citys identity as increasingly
stronger, the fact is that the city does
not have the conditions to replace the
State as a political organization. There
is a dangerous empty space between
the States political fragility and a
growing affirmation of the city that
does not compensate for the loss of
State legitimacy.
This void in the political framework
has allowed cracks to open up in our
constructions of identity, namely in
western countries. I believe that at present, we are all stunned when we witness the creation of eccentric States
with actual, effective statutory capacity, as in the recent case of the Islamic
State, with thousands of Europeans
moving there in order to become citi-
zens of that kind of State. It is a clear

example of the deterioration of the role
of State identity and cohesion, whereby
other forms generate political, social
and organization disruptions.
The cultural sector has hesitated to
become part of a national strategy
together with the economic, industrial, business or even diplomatic
spheres., Because it engages these
different universes, architecture
should be a key agent in this acting
horizontally through horizontality
culture, but this it doesnt seem to
have happened. What are the reasons for this? Why does it happen?
JBX: It is a rather difficult question
and one that I dont quite have a fully
formed answer for. From 1974 until today, with the countrys democratization, a growing division between erudite and popular culture has curiously
arisen. This division already existed in
the previous period of 1926-1974,
known as Estado Novo, where culture
fell into the category of either erudite
or popular, and the State sought to ex-
We are well aware

that it is so, and the
grammar I spoke
of is not merely
aesthetical or one
that organizes
space according
to technical
knowledge, it
represents what
society is at that
moment, its utopias
and expectations.
The path before us
absolutely does not
lead to lowering,
corrupting or
degrading their
creative practice.
It leads to an
awareness of
social presence.
ploit both as instruments of propaganda.

In a disconnected way, this was undertaken through the creation of a national federation for joy in the workplace, or the casas do povo (communal recreational centres) on the popular culture front. On the erudite side
stood Antnio Ferros projects. Even
though there was a dissociation between them, both cultures were connected to the overall idea of the Good
Portuguese People. After the revolution of April 25, the political system no
longer wanted to use culture as an instrument in an outspoken way, but political decision-makers distanced
themselves from the grassroots of popular culture, and this resulted in a
growing validation of erudite culture.
This led to cultural policies validating,
time after time, the niche interests in
detriment of audiences and publics.
Fruition was present in popular urban
culture, for instance, through music,
which no longer depended on State
policy. This divergence led cultural
agents in the areas of theatre, dance,
the visual arts, film and even architecture to become a self-sustaining circle,
validated from within but not by the
wider society. This critical autophagic
exercise is the reason why there have
been no negative repercussions in public opinion to the fact that, over the last
15 years, the funding of cultural policies has been decreasing in a very expressive way. The only negative impact
that was felt came from the specialized
media, the intellectual and arts circles,
but there has been no backlash from
the overall population. It is exactly for
this reason that we urgently need the
creative areas as well as architecture
to engage audiences. The path before
us absolutely does not lead to lowering,
corrupting or degrading their creative
practice. It leads to an awareness of social presence. This is not a Portuguese
problem alone, but an international
one with direct and perceivable reflections, as in the case of the United
States, where philanthropic funding
shifted from cultural initiatives to social causes, resulting from the absence
of engagement between culture and
society.
In your opinion what is the role of
this kind of events in the affirmation
and visibility of the national cultural industries in a globalized world in
which new polarities emerge in other geographical contexts? What can
the future of Portuguese culture be
in this kind of events?
JBX: The Venice Biennale is an undeniable, incontestable reference for
both good and bad reasons. Artists as
intellectuals, experts, critics and the
media, all have Venice written down
on their calendars as an absolute do
not miss event. Of course that today
we have other centres of legitimation
and presence in various locations
around the world that cannot be ignored, especially as far as Portugal is
concerned. So Paulo is unfortunately no longer very relevant, as the Architecture Biennale has deteriorated.
But, we hope that will change and
that it goes back to being something
interesting. Nevertheless there is no
doubt over the relevance of our presence in Switzerland or Japan, China,
India or the Arab countries. We need
to understand how to approach South
America and the United States and
we need to understand the new internationalization map of architecture,
together with all the cultural agents
and professionals, investors and people that are connected with the dissemination and promotion of architecture and we need to establish a
presence there.
38
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
Art
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
39
Travel
homeland
News from Portugal, October 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
LIKEarchitects, Mariana Pestana, architect editor
Miguel Eufrsia, architect editor
Miguel Marcelino, Paulo Moreira
Pedro Clarke, architect editor
Sami Arquitectos, Susana Ventura, architect editor
Contributors
Carlos Pinto, Filipa Ramalhete, Herbert Wright,
Joana Pestana Lages, Joo Quinto,
Joo Soares, Jos Antnio Bandeirinha,
Jos Antnio Pinto, Jos Custdio Vieira da
Silva, Diogo Burnay, Manuel Correia Fernandes
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, Susana Pomba
Revision-Edition
Pedro Clarke
Graphic Design
Silvadesigners
Illustration
Ana Arago, Armanda Vilar, Vasco Mourao
3D visualization
PROMPT
Legal Support
Tiago Piscarreta
Photographers
Dinis Sottomayor, Helder Sousa, Paulo Catrica,
Paulo Pimenta, Pedro Verde, Rui Pinheiro, Simo
Botelho, Sofia Borges
Back cover
Friendly Fire
Lisbon, 2014 ALEXANDER SILVA
PRODUCTION
A solo show by Portuguese urban artist Alexandre Farto AKA Vhils at the Electricity Museum in Lisbon
Disseco/Dissection
ALESSIA ALLEGRI
Architect and researcher at CIAUD,

University of Lisbon
Dissection by the urban artist

Alexandre Farto, artistic name
Vhils, and curated by Joo Pinharanda, at the EDP Foundation
/ Electricity Museum in Lisbon
is one of the most interesting exhibitions of recent times. Dissection is the first solo show by
Vhils in one of Portugals main
art institutions and the artists
largest to date.
On display until the beginning
of October, this ambitious,
ground-breaking show features
an entirely new body of work
conceived specifically for the
museums space, both outdoors
and indoors.
Aiming to be an in-depth reflection on the urban space and
its interrelationship with its inhabitants, Dissection takes as
starting point various key elements that compose the urban
environment.
The artists intention is to establish a progressive path
through several purposefully
built interconnected environments within the Museum,
which enables the visitors to experience the passage from a dimension of noise, chaos and visual saturation the expression
of life in contemporary cities to
a neutral setting where he intends to conduct a methodical
dissection of familiar urban elements using the various unconventional media and destructive
techniques which he has been
exploring in his work.
Once inside infect, you start by
walking through a dark tunnel
lined with several stencilled, laser-cut acrylic boards placed
over television screens playing
videos in the background, presenting a unique experience to
Vhils latest graphic and typographic work. Proceeding

through the various purposelydesigned exhibition rooms, viewers access different areas where
they can experience distinct
styles within Vhils works. Giving
the show its name, the exhibit
culminates with a dissected underground train carriage suspended from the ceiling which
requires one to lie down on the
floor to get the full view of it.
Objects inherent to the urban
space, which speak of life in the
cities, are re-contextualised and
neutralised with white, eliminating contrasts, details and
other characterising marks capable of distracting the viewer.
This reflection enables the highlighting of the essential contained in the elements worked
by Vhils through a practice of
dissection following different
cutting typologies that allow for
a comprehensive view of the
whole, free of interferences.
This operation of neutralisation allows a clinical, distanced
reading, a critical de-composition
which enables the unveiling of
what lies beneath the several layers that compose these familiar
elements which we face daily in a
benumbed, unresponsive way. By
confronting the viewer with this
act of methodical separation,
Dissection aims to foster a better
understanding of the reality of
the contemporary city and the
complex web of reciprocal influence which gives form and substance to the relationship between it and its inhabitants.
The suffocating urban space
and its suffocated citizens, or
the reverse of urban glamour,
are always present in an oeuvre
where faces appear as a type of
portraits, in a global identity
card of the underprivileged and
the rebellious, true protagonists
of Vhils works.
Linqing Lu Shanghai, 2012 SMARTB
Portrait SLVIA LOPES
Senhor Edinho, Rio de Janeiro, Providencia, 2012 JOO PEDRO MOREIRA
ABOUT THE ARTIST

Alexandre Farto (b. 1987),
who also signs his work
as Vhils, has developed
a unique visual language
based on an aesthetics of
vandalism derived from
his background in illegal
graffiti. He works by
removing of the surface
layers of walls and
other media with nonconventional tools and
techniques, establishing
symbolic reflections on
life in the urban context,
the passage of time
and the relationship
of interdependence
between people and the
surrounding environment.
His creations go further
than just using the walls
of the city as a support or
mechanically transferring
artistic solutions from the
outside on to his canvasses,
demonstrating a great
global capacity for
intervention and invention
in spaces and media. His
groundbreaking carving
technique has been met
with critical acclaim and his
career, albeit recent, has
already gained a foothold
on several continents.
Since 2005 he has been
presenting his work around
the world in solo and
collective shows, events
and institutions, and sitespecific interventions and
projects. He has also taken
part in some of the most
prestigious contemporary
urban art projects. Vhils
currently works with
Vera Corts Art Agency
(Portugal), Lazarides
Gallery (UK), and Magda
Danysz Gallery (France
and China).
Lisbon Architecture Triennale

President
Jos Mateus
Deputy Director
Manuel Henriques
Production
Isabel Antunes, head
Liliana Lino, Ins Marques
Fundraising and Partnerships
Sara Battesti
Management Assistant
Helena Soares
Communication and Press
Maria Schiappa, head
Teresa Vieira, Patricia Lopes
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
INSTITUTIONAL 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 His Excellency the Secretary of State for
Culture of Portugal for his kind contribution to
this third edition of Homeland and also express
a sincere appreciation to all the people and
organizations who have contributed to this final
part of the project that marks the Portuguese
Representation in the 14th International
Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia.
Albino Borges, Alcino Glria, Alexandra Paio,
Alexandre Farto AKA Vhils, Ana Rita Luz Mestre,
Andreia Salavessa, Aurora Carapinha, Brbara
Maes, Bruxa Teatro, Cantares de vora, Carine
Pimenta, Catarina Sousa Martins, Catarina Ribeiro,
Claudemira Oliveira, Coleco B, Dina Patrcio,
Dinis Sottomayor, Eduardo Gonalves Rodrigues,
Filipe Jorge, Fernando Pinto, FG + SG Fotografia
de Arquitectura, Gonalo Faustino, Gonalo
Reino Pires, Gui Castro Felga, Guida Marques,
Ins Afonso, Isabel Flores, Joana Felcio, Joana
Manta Botelho, Joaquim Alves, Joo Afonso
Almeida, Joo do Vale Martins, Jose Antonio
Pinto, Jos Pereira, Jlio Martinho, Leonor Areal,
Lus Berrance, Lus Miranda, Lus Silva, Maria
Crista, Maria Emlia Barata, Mariana Simes, Mrio
Estevam, Maria Emlia Barata, Monica Calle, Nuno
Portas, Olinda Silva, P de Xumbo, Pedro Matos
Gameiro, Raquel Pinto, Rogrio Beltro Coelho,
Rui Beltro Coelho, Serafim Parada, Simo
Botelho, Teotnio Pereira, Unio das Freguesias
de Custias, Lea do Balio e Guifes, Vitrio Leite
The partners, sponsors and supporters
of this project and the contributors to
this editorial project
PARTNER
PRINTING SUPPORT
lvaro Siza, Quinta da Malagueira Social Housing, vora FG + SG FOTOGRAFIA DE ARQUITECTURA
Herbert Wright calls on houses from Alentejo to Lisbon
House-Share: Location and Politics

HERBERT WRIGHT
I had seen remarkable houses in the
north of Portugal, but now I was in
Alentejo, east of Lisbon, to see more.
The Quinta da Malagueira social housing estate in vora was designed by lvaro Siza shortly after the 1974 popular
revolution had overthrown the totalitarian Estado Novo regime. He was a
founder of SAAL, which aimed to reconnect architects with the people, and
Malagueira followed two SAAL projects in Porto. Malagueira was began in
1977, and was much bigger: 1,200 houses on the edge of town.
An aqueduct-like services structure
of concrete blocks spreads out across
the development. Streets of white rowhouses, some with skirting and door
frames subsquently painted in pastel
shades, echo local tradition. A road is
surrealistically spanned by plain rainstained walls cut with rectangular apertures, like a sequence of gates, and in
corners, patches of lush garden bloom.
The effect is tranquil, monumental, almost like a ruin.
But domestic space is far from a ruin.
Houses come with private tiled garden
courtyard, a generous kitchen, a 'recuperador de calor' (closed fireplace) and
a terrace. Middle-class residents, including architects, have moved in, attracted by the architecture. Older residents are not so impressed. They see
the breezeblock aqueduct structure as
unfinished. They don't like the lack of
on-street parking. Gardens and lawns
have become scruffy. Gypsies are accused of forming their own ghettoes.
Altering Siza's architecture is forbidden, but occupants have raised the
height of dividing walls for privacy and
protection. There seems to be a disconnect between the architect and the people. If even Siza, with his scrupulous
intentions and political stance proven
with SAAL, cannot bridge it, what is to

be done?
The next stop was Estremoz, where
architect Pedro Matos Gameiro built a
shining-white family house in 2011, set
in the sloping terrain of olive tree 3 km
from town. Its covered walkway around
a square garden courtyard is a contemporary cloister, with bedrooms on
three sides, and a nearly cubical volume
at a corner. In it, an upstairs study overlooks the double-height living room
through a high porthole. Light floods
into the living room, some through a
circular skylight window set in a remarkable ceiling that looks like golden
wood! Matos Gameiro explains the secret: it is an effect of mud left on the
planks setting the concrete.
Outside, a patio apron extends under
a frame for ivy to grow, and a swim- Pedro Matos Gameiro, House in Estremoz SIMO BOTELHO
ming pool is aligned towards Estremoz's fortress hill. The right angle to another hill around the horizon defines
the rectilinear house's orientation.
This idyllic retreat is unapologetically
modern, and quietly connects into the
timeless landscape.
The final Alentejo house is in Vila
Viosa, just two kilometres from the
Spanish border. The Casa Barata dos
Santos is another extended family
house, but with a jumble of angular volumes under pitched terracotta roofs, a
secluded traditional courtyard, and a
three-dimensional labyrinth of rooms
inside.
Completed in 1963, it was designed
by Nuno Portas and the great Catholic
brutalist Nuno Teotnio Pereira, who
collaborated with on Lisbon's Igreja do
Sagrado Corao (Church of the Sacred
Heart). The house seems to resonate
with the church: its vertical slit win- Pedro Matos Gameiro, House in Estremoz SIMO BOTELHO
dows, the non-orthogonal angles, and
different exterior levels facing the cle the dining room below the ceiling. and traditional reflects what Tvora
houses behind. Local materials were Yet fixtures such as lamps or kitchen evangelised in the north of Portugal.
used, for example in cork ceilings, cupboards are mid-century modern,
185 km away, back to Lisbon, archiwooden handrails, and stone walls. and a concrete pergola floats above an tects Lucinda Correira and Ana Jara of
Traditional blue patterned tiles encir- outside terrace. This mix of modern Artria are responsible for an amazing
house project completed in 2012. It is

called the Edificio Manifesto, a.k.a.
Mouradia- Casa Communitria da
Mouraria, or simply 'the Blue House'.
Mouraria is one of Lisbon's dense, old
hillside neighbourhoods, and until recently harboured poverty, crime and
decay. Yet Portugal's legendary fado
music originated there, and its multiethic population gives it vibrancy. The
Blue House is an old angular two-storey
structure squeezed into the steep stairways and narrow alleys of the area,
with a mini-plaza at its doorstep. The
house was abandoned and set to become a ruin.
The house was renovated, upper
parts were gutted, and a new internal
structure of treated yellow wood was
built to create a new room above the
first floor, all under a new roof. Activities for local schoolchildren were
devised during construction, and the
community became stakeholders.
Now, the ground floor is a caf, the
community uses the big floor above,
and the office is in the new floating
room over it. This place is alive, the
community have come together in it,
and the blue exterior makes it dazzle!
Just like Tvora 60 years ago, Artria use colour and they bridge the local/traditional with the contemporary. They may well have also achieved
what evaded Siza in Malagueirabridging the gap between the people
and architecture.
In the north, I saw that the house
typology in Portugal thrived because
initially architects could express
themselves in private commissions
that avoided the Estado Novo's influence. Their modernism continued,
but with a local dimension. In Alentejo and Lisbon, the local is different,
and the politics is still evolving. So,
too, the houses. From countryside to
the heart of the metropolis, it's extraordinary how far the Portuguese
house can go.
40
NEWS FROM PORTUGAL
This is the
Portuguese
Pavilion
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
CARLOS PINTO
FILIPA RAMALHETE
HERBERT WRIGHT
JOANA PESTANA LAGES
JOO QUINTO
JOO SOARES
JOS ANTNIO
BANDEIRINHA
JOS ANTNIO PINTO
JOS CUSTDIO VIEIRA
DA SILVA
DIOGO BURNAY
MANUEL CORREIA
FERNANDES
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
at last
Friendly fire
www.friendlyfire.info
fanzinefriendlyfire@gmail.com
INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
PIRANESI PRIX DE ROME
Die Hard
National Museum
Machado de Castro
in Coimbra
o finish with a bang, this trilogy

of articles inspired by films, we
chose a box-office hit. In the
first chapter of this saga a full
haired, barefooted, trigger happy Bruce Willis, rescues an L.A.
generic high-rise building held
captive by East German terrorists.
From this movie, we learn that an inexpugnable glass curtain wall is, after all,
just a couple of chair blows away from
being opened up.
Now that everything seems to already
be built and the economy has gone bust,
the time has come to do the aftermath.
What can we do with all the evidence of
architectural mistakes? Plant vines, as
Wright proposed? Press undo, with
the eloquence of C-4 plastic explosives?
Or are we just to inhabit the wrecks?
In 1977 the Boua Housing Complex
was partially built in Porto. Only two of
the originally four blocks planned by
Siza were finished, leaving it in a state
of limbo until 2006 when it was finally
completed. The already then questionable existenzminimum spirit was kept
alive with another 30 years on its back,
as if the countrys social and economic
conditions would remain the same. Of
course that wasnt the case and, in the
meantime, most of the original recipients sort for a solution for their housing
problems elsewhere.
Minimum housing, covered in highly
praised architecture aura, became hipster paradise as more and more low-income young architects, graphic designers and artists of all sorts moved in- the
shift into existenzhipsterum is well under march. Were facing an unheard-of
case of gentrification. The new dwellers, far from pushing the original ones
away, actually adopted some of their
living standards and codes: the houses
were equipped with Pritzker awarded
versions of marquise windows (see our
last issues article), ironic porcelain
dogs ornament some of their doorsteps
and, once a year, for St. Johns (Portos
city holiday), they bring out their IKEA
furniture to sit side-by-side with the
older inhabitants and their plastic tables and chairs, feasting on grilled sardines. As colourful as it may be, the fact
is that the younger generations in
Boua live in truly monastic spaces
compared to what they could get in the
surroundings for the same price. Its
only bearable because the added value
of architecture or a good dose of irony.
As in the movie, our lives and expectations are being held captive by an invisible hand turning us into the volunteer
prisoners of architecture.
Nothing illustrates this better than
the most recent nationwide public building program to renovate secondary
schools. Under the strict air and temperature quality directives designed
somewhere in northern Europe, a great
number of schools were equipped with
expensive heating and cooling equipment that coincidently are mainly produced at those latitudes. To comply with
those regulations, windows were installed in a way that they cant be
opened, as our barbaric ancestors used
to. Unable to support its operating costs,
the machines were rendered useless.
However we still at least know how to
design sturdy and heavy (Porto Poetic)
furniture. Lets now learn from Bruce
Willis the art of defenestration and how
to throw it through the window in the
name of poetic justice.
The Piranesi Prix de Rome is a recent

award promoted by the Accademia Adrianea for Architecture and Archaeology, in
partnership with several other Italian institutions (mainly from Rome), which celebrates works of architecture responsible
for the re-qualification of archeological
sites enhancing, at the same time, their important cultural heritages. This year the
Piranesi prize was attributed (ex-aequo
with the Cromatius Hall and Squares of the
Basilica of Aquileia, by Tortelli e Frassoni
Architects) to the National Museum
Machado de Castro, in Coimbra, Portugal,
a project by Gonalo Byrne Architects. The
museum is located in the Alta of Coimbra,
a place of intense sedimentation and historical superimposition for over two millennia where the Roman Forum Aemininum lies, as well as, the Romanesque
church of S. Joo de Almedina, the gallery
of Terzi, and the 18th Century Apse of the
Tesoureiro Chapel. These fragments are
an important inscription of the history of
the city itself, of its specific topographical
condition (the hill) and the evolution of several art periods as they are always the expression of their contemporary demands.
Nevertheless, there is a lucid acceptance of
contemporary criticism of these sequences, whence the constant mingling of container and content are the primary feature of the project in order to correct the
rupture of scale and historical context
caused by sometimes random juxtapositions. Two elemental volumes define a
flooded neutral space, illuminated by diffuse light that silently rests on the collection pieces. The gallery occupies the entire
volume of the trapezoidal shape, rising up
four levels and creating a platform (the restaurants terrace) where a rectangular volume of transparent and translucent glass
sits that, at night, becomes a sort of beacon.
The lower volume adapts to the existing
layout of the streets and from everywhere
one is able to cross the public space of the
museum and its dependencies, rescuing
what once was the most important public
space of the roman city: the Forum. The
experience of space is thus revealed as a
sort of condenser of the surrounding city,
explained around the visit by similarities,
analogies or contrasting perspectives of
the city itself and its centuries-old history
in a unified perception of beauty.
Weather
Portuguese Official Representation at the 14th International Architecture
Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 7 June to 23 November 2014
www.homeland.pt
20
Newspaper distribution point
IVO POAS MARTINS

AND MATILDE SEABRA
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.
PARTLY SUNNY AND HUMID.

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

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HOW IS IDENTITY RELATED

MACAU MODERN GLORY:

WE ARE ABLE TO IDENTIFY

IMAGENING A SILO BEING REFILLED

DIRECTOR PEDRO CAMPOS COSTA

In the temporary home at

The space of intimacy

(Not just) a place

Architecture needs to go beyond the

All quiet on the western front

produce wind, solar and photovoltaic

But most of them have wasted away for

PEDRO VERDE (ARQUITETO)

Homeland, October 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

Homeland, October 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

CITIES AND ART

42,195 km is the distance of a marathon, not so much a sport more of mission as

tion that already existed in shelves and

25KM BACK TO WORK, TOPS

Homeland, October 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

Homeland, October 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

interview by CARLOS PINTO, PEDRO CAMPOS COSTA

THE ROLES OF THE

DO YOU STILL WANT

promoting it to, in some way, to generate more revenue

planning problems, they are just

GONALO REINO PIRES

Homeland, October 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

Homeland, October 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

In the first moment, dedicated to empty buildings and

tourist that is (in)voluntary

During our residency we

We hosted a lunch with a social worker from Campanh neighbourhood and

The fourth moment was reflective, where we looked

Housing and Social Identity

Homeland, October 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

Homeland, October 2014

NEWS FROM PORTUGAL

Horoscope / The future of transitory housing

Its definitely time for Guardians to

Your structural principle is strong and

Hostels are thriving and will continue

Youve worked hard for the context

Home sharing abroad

Money matters should be going well

New ideas for your career could be

Activities of some kind could put you

This is a great day to start new

Its your time to give back, Hotels.

Projects involving a group, perhaps

The winds of tourism have been

What are you waiting for?

Professor and researcher at CEACT/

Finding a home with the right

ing importance and scope of exchange students programs, such

generations, but finding a house

*This chronicle is inspired by research currently being undertaken at