Housing. From the highest number for all

Rodrigo Lino Gaspar

rodrigolinogaspar@gmail.com

Architect | PHD Student at Departamento de Arquitectura da Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (Da/UAL), Portugal

To cite this paper: GASPAR, Rodrigo Lino – Housing. From the highest number to for all. Estudo Prévio 21. Lisboa: CEACT/UAL – Centro de Estudos de Arquitetura, Cidade e Território da Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, 2022, p. 61-76. ISSN: 2182- 4339 [Available at: www.estudoprevio.net]. DOI:https://doi.org/10.26619/2182-4339/21.PHD.1

Review received on 20 July 2022 and accepted for publication on 15 September 2022.

Creative Commons, licença CC BY-4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

**Housing. From the greatest number for all.**

Abstract

Housing has returned to the centre of public debate, due to market deregulation and consequent need for public housing. We propose to observe a distinct architecture project in the portuguese context, a large scale public housing project, colective housing complex “Pantera Cor-de-Rosa” in Chelas, Lisbon, PT, carried between 1972 and 1979, by Gonçalo Byrne (1941) and António Reis Cabrita (1942).

Product of its time and the post-war housing problem, Pantera Cor-de-Rosa lies between the problem of the “Greatest Number” and “housing for all” [1], in the transition from a dictatorship regime to Portuguese democracy. The project presents a confrontation of ideas and concepts, in the duality of proposing a new town system and the return to historical city; between modern city systems and the modern movement critique, joining English references to Italian exemples, proposing a “critical formalism”.

The article aims the comprehension of Pantera Cor-de-Rosa’s project, analysing its current situation, wondering its future: demolition or regeneration?

Keywords: Pantera Cor-de-Rosa, Gonçalo Byrne, housing problem, demolition or regeneration

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1 _ Place

The place of “Pantera Cor-de-Rosa” is a large territory, with a rugged landscape of valleys and river basins in the geomorphological system of the city and the river Tagus. Chelas is a new city area, in the modern concept of tabula rasa[2], in a place of agricultural land organised around farms and convents, at the edge of the city.

The city’s major transformation in the twentieth century, with the Gröer[3] Plan and the neighbourhood of Alvalade[4], continues and expands to the East under the policy of the office Gabinete Técnico de Habitação[5] (GTH), in the plans for the neighbourhoods of Olivais Norte (1955-58), Olivais Sul (1960) and Chelas (1964). The Chelas Urbanization Plan[6] is divided into five housing areas, Zona I, J, L, M and N, linked by a central area for shops and services. The concentration of construction in “intense urban life strips” using a linear structure would be a reaction to the cellular structure of previous plans.

The implementation of the Chelas Plan would extend in time, partially due to the need for land expropriation. The revolution, on April 25, 1974, made evident the dire need for housing, inherited from the previous regime, Estado Novo, and increased by the influx of new populations, which would lead to monofunctional housing in Chelas. Social stigma ensued, the populations housed in Chelas were increasingly disadvantaged and isolated, missing city life because they were far from the city, from work, transportation, social equipment, and green spaces. This contributed to in a place of agricultural land organized around farms and convents in the city.

Figure 1 – “Pantera Cor-de-Rosa” Housing – Photo by Daniel Malhão September 2015 (Source: Archive Gonçalo Byrne).

Drug trafficking and consumption would settle here, as in other parts of the city, such as Bairro do Chinês or Camboja. The social housing neighbourhoods became known as dangerous areas of the city.

Today, Chelas is a scattered area of the city, of loose parts amongst interstitial spaces,, in an excess of road connections. It was a place where urban planning was experimented in the 1960, in the emergence of PREC[7], and the rights acquired under the 1976 Constitution and drug traffic. It is an incomplete area of the city, with urban empty voids and public land waiting for its destiny and the possibility of becoming part of the city.

2 _ Project

The Pantera Cor-de-Rosa housing estate was commissioned by Fundo de Fomento à Habitação for lots 222 to 229 of the Chelas Urbanization Plan, in Zona N, the scheme commissioned was for 12,000 inhabitants / 2,500 houses. It included 382 houses, category II [8] of the G.T.H. system, parking and shopping areas.

In response to Olivais Sul, in Zona N2, a set of buildings was allocated to a design team to allow for more control over exterior areas “a bigger control over language of exterior spaces and the reduction of different solutions in public space around buildings” (CABRITA, 1981: 21, author translation). The selection of design teams would associate experienced architects in housing with young architects[9].

Thus, appears Nuno Teotonio Pereira (NTP) with civic experience at the First National Conference of Architecture in 1948 (PEREIRA; MARTINS, 1948) on the matter of forced population displacement (PEREIRA, 2007, leaflet distributed in 1966), published in the section “Social Housing” of the magazine Arquitectura (PEREIRA, 1989). Moreover, he had practical experience in monitoring the construction of Alvalade neighbourhood, his projects in Federação das Caixas de Previdência, Bloco das Águas Livres and Olivais Norte and Sul.

Figure 2 – “Pantera Cor-de-Rosa” Housing (Source: Archive Gonçalo Byrne)

Gonçalo Byrne and Antonio Reis Cabrita, who worked in NTP’s studio , were the architects selected after winning the urban project competition for the area of Pontinha in Faro; following Nuno Teotonio Pereira arrests for political reasons, they became authors of what was their first built project under the occasional supervision of Nuno Portas, who divided his time between the Escola Superior de Belas Artes (ESBAL), Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC), the magazine Arquitectura and his studio.

Nuno Portas observes the new generation, Pedro Botelho and João Paciência in the project of Restelo, Gonçalo Byrne and Antonio Reis Cabrita in the design of Pantera Cor-de-Rosa. They would go against the previous perspective of the studio, over-design or detail architecture, a more organic tradition of the church Sagrado Coração de Jesus or the Franjinhas Building. While the project of Restelo tried the concept of Low-Rise High Density[10], the Chelas project represented a major risk “the mega building integrating street and square concepts” (PORTAS, 2004: 56, author translation) he would name the project “Chelas Siedlungen”.

As director of LNEC’s Architecture Division[11], Nuno Portas called on a group of architects to conduct research in the field of architecture. Gonçalo Byrne, following the study of Design Method’s (BYRNE, 1969: 127), published the report Coordenação Dimensional Modular (BYRNE, 1970), a tool to configure the dimension of projects in order to streamline it based on dimensions and modules. Antonio Reis Cabrita developed Processo de Comunicação à Obra on streamlining and typifying projects and the link between project and construction work.

The Partial Plan for Zona N2 of Chelas, coordinated by Francisco Silva Dias, is developed based on the experience in Zona I, and Zona J, with reference to the English third-generation New Towns[12] and Toulouse-le-Mirail[13]. The Plan will be heavily attacked by the design teams, in particular the concept of separation between pedestrians and cars, the dalles pietonnières[14], it was replaced by fragments of different urban concepts, since there was no agreement on an alternative idea. The main streets, the scenic road and the proximity road, as well as the landscape components of the valley line and the privileged view would all be maintained.

The urban idea for Pantera Cor-de-Rosa was the construction of a piece of city, the definition of an urban mesh in the logic of the historical city vocabulary, the block, the street, the square, the patio to create places of coexistence. The strategy used was to concentrate the buildings in order to design public space, a street that connected the two roads in Silva Dias Plan, a square at the intersection between the latter with the proximity road and a block that limited the top of the main valley, thus enhancing the views over the Tagus.

Pantera Cor-de-Rosa was a mega-structure on a territorial scale, settled in the existing topography, looking over the valley line, establishing a relation with the features of the place or the geographical, landscape, social, historical and cultural pre-existences, echoing Il territorio dell’architettura by Vittorio Gregotti and the landscape as a sum of all things and their past configurations[15], and The City as architecture by Nuno Portas, in the sense that “there cannot be a building that doesn’t make city, in other words, there is not a typology that is not structurally penetrated by an urban morphology” (PORTAS, 2007: 15, author translation). The urban dimension of city buildings or urban models would always be present in the designs of Teotónio Pereira’s office, in the Shopping Center of Sao Sebastiao da Pedreira, where Gonçalo Byrne worked, or in the Church Sagrado Coração de Jesus, where Nuno Portas worked.

Unlike other ensembles, Pantera does not close in on itself, but rather creates a simple geometrical shape and proposes extending its urban system and morphology to its neighbouring areas, though unsuccessfully. Above all, it establishes an urban centrality by building a square with some commercial program, defined by a set of buildings and by an urban image that unifies housing blocks, as well as a formal relationship of bevelled corners that mark the image of the square to establish a link and pedestrian circulation easier, in a clear analogy to the contemporary project of the Quartiere Gallaratese by C. Aymonino and A. Rossi.

Figure 3 – “Pantera Cor-de-Rosa” Housing – Floor Type Plan (Source: Archive Gonçalo Byrne).

In contrast, the circulation system uses elements of the modern city, marking formal exceptions in the rigid metric of the buildings. It uses empty space or straight or curvy volume, applying “critical formalism” that Gonçalo Byrne refers to in Algumas Premissas para uma Nova Arquitectura (2010, 1a ed. 1976). The circulation system is located on the inner side, using human scale and proximity, in contrast with the outer side, facing the landscape, using territorial scale, similar to what was used in the project Cinco Dedos[16]. A duality is again evident, in this case in terms of the scales present throughout the project, such as the duality of pink colours, which have faded with time.

The horizontal distribution in a half-protruding gallery and on alternating floors emphasizes the horizontal lines of the buildings and uses the streets-in-the-sky[17] concept by the Smithsons for a new urban structure with a collective space to access the houses and an external extension covered by that collective space, in a network of covered patios, separated from the roads. In the extension of the galleries, where they intersect with the vertical circulations, you can see projections of connecting bridges between the buildings, though only the bridges of the patios have been built.

Vertical circulations gain general relevance in the building: they are marked in the metric of the long volume, at the intersection between the galleries and the stairs, as empty spaces on the sides of the buildings. The lifts and infrastructures form vertical curved volumes, strategically inserted at the tops and roughly at halfway of the buildings, become curved corners that create an exception in the housing structure and in the horizontal lines of the galleries and mark a strong urban image, reminiscent of the architecture forms of the Siedlungen[18], in a new scale.

The studies conducted at LNEC by the authors would be applied in Pantera Cor-de- Rosa, attempting constructive rationality and cost reduction as a future model. Byrne’s dimensional modularity using a unit and a mesh resulted in a 6×6 metre grid and in the repetition of housing typologies for greater profitability. Reis Cabrita’s Projecto de Comunicação em Obra[19] allowed designing a project based on streamlining and considerable decrease in project pieces at a time when there were no computers.

The reduced-area dwellings are distributed among typologies 2 bedrooms-136 houses, 3 bedrooms – 176 houses and 4 bedrooms -70 houses. Most houses are Typologies 2 and 3 bedrooms and occupy most areas of the buildings, 4 bedrooms typology are the exceptional cases at both corner ends of buildings. The typologies of the last floors are duplex (interior staircase). Access to the flats is 30% made directly through the galleries, using the covered curved recess of the gallery, the remaining flats are accessible through a small staircase, similar to what happens on a boat.

Though the upper floors are mostly for housing, the scheme also includes small businesses at street level and storage in the adjustment quota with the slope of the land. These places where there is little circulation would be the most problematic in terms of crime and drug trafficking.

3 _ Time

“Cities have a proper time in which traces left by society, by political regimes and their different cultures will accumulate. This time is slow and resistant to more ephemeral human manifestation because in a way the built marks are durable and cause of persistences.” (BYRNE, 1985: 3, author translation)

The Pantera Cor-de-Rosa era begins in 1968, the year its authors graduated. In a world dominated by the Cold War, the year begins with the Prague Spring, the democratic opening of the communist regime that would last until August with the military invasion of the USSR. In Paris, May ‘68 erupts with the demonstrations by university students claiming their place in the Conservative de Gaulle regime. Strikes and disputes would give way to new values and a new culture of political struggles, confrontation of ideas and philosophical works; issues such as the right to the city and the right to housing were raised in the face of the bidonvilles and the informal city.

In Portugal, student demonstrations would take place the following year in Coimbra, after the crisis in Lisbon university (in Cidade Universitária campus), in 1962, in the middle of the Colonial War, which leads to university confrontation and opposition to the regime, mobilizing a generation of future politicians in Portuguese democracy.

After the fall of the dictator, Salazar, begins the period known as the “Primavera Marcelista” (Marcelist Spring), when the Portuguese fascist regime became more open, more liberal, Parliament included a liberal wing, there were administrative and legislative reforms, and the III Plano de Fomento, a plan to promote the country that included openness to foreign investment, raising the expectation of democracy in the country, which would only be achieved on 25 April 1974, with the revolution.

The III Plano de Fomento led to the creation of an agency for housing, Fundo de Fomento à Habitação (FFH), “with the goal of gathering, in a single institution, different forms of state intervention in social housing sector” (Decree-Law no49 033, dated 28 March, whose objective was to build 49,430 houses according to III Plano de Fomento, author translation). FFH would continue the Chelas Plan, opening the tender for the Pantera Cor-de-Rosa housing state. The project started in November 1972 and was completed in August 1974, in the midst of the revolutionary period. The construction work would be allocated only in September 1975, to the company Edifer, construction started in December 1975 and was completed in November 1979, with continuous updates on the construction costs. Issues arose when the work was completed.

The Pantera Cor-de-Rosa project was intended for a category studied by G.T.H. based on sociological studies regarding resident typification. However, Pantera Cor-de-Rosa would be occupied by the residents of Quinta do Narigão, an informal neighbourhood, within the policy of rehousing in the heat of the 1979 municipal elections. The residents would live in the houses for 3 months without access to any infrastructure networks: In an interview conducted for this article, Gonçalo Byrne described the moment they finally had electricity, saying:

“at 11 pm in a summerday close to popular festivities, in an infernal heat, people were standing in the exterior galleries as if it were a boat deck, like in a Fellini movie, and suddenly a big round of applause went out, one of those that makes the world tremble.” (Byrne, July 2022, author translation)

The following years would see an increase in crime and drug traffic that would mark Lisbon in the 1980s and 1990s. The insecurity felt would lead residents to install gates along the accesses to the galleries, privatizing the collective space; violence and wars among traffickers and the police in the neighbourhood led to common areas becoming run-down and left without maintenance by public entities. The neighbouring Bairro do Relógio [20] would be renamed Camboja, one of the city’s epicentres of drug addiction and drug trafficking.

The outside spaces around Pantera Cor-de-Rosa were not built right away. The proximity road was completed after houses were lived in. Though there was a landscaping project, the square would only be paved later. In 2001, with “Lisboa, the capital of Nada – Marvila”[21], artist Fernanda Fragateiro, together with the population of the neighbourhood, carried out the intervention entitled “O Paraíso é um Lugar Onde Nunca Nada Acontece” (paradise is a place where nothing happens), which would redesign and above all plant small abandoned public spaces.

Figure 4 – Photographs of the work site (Source: Archive Gonçalo Byrne)

4 _ Program

“Over the 1960s, Nuno Portas widened his reflections and major works, A arquitectura para hoje (1964) and A cidade como arquitectura (1969) where he distanced himself from the modern movement, from the overvalue tendency of languages and authorship, proposing inaugurally a qualified serial architecture in a democratic city.” (Tostões, 2006: 17, author translation)

The post-war housing problem in Portugal was mentioned in the 1st National Conference on Architecture in 1948, namely the need for housing for the working and the middle classes. Although the Alvalade Plan was under construction, partly financed by Caixas de Previdência, it was evident that the programs for affordable houses and low rent houses were not enough to meet the demographic pressure of the ever-increasing population influx to the city.

Between the post-war period and the 1974 revolution, people were able to have a house either by renting or buying a house available in the market, by renting a “part of the house”, i.e., sharing a house with other families, by renting or building an informal/precarious house and/or by renting or building an “illegal” house, generally in the outskirts of the city.

The majority of the Portuguese population did not know or simply did not want to know about these illegal neighbourhoods, since, during the dictatorship, censorship controlled communication and the press. The situation would be disclosed, partly by the news of the Lisbon floods in 1967, the earthquake in1969 and the forced eviction operation of those living in the areas where the bridge over the river Tagus would be built “shack inhabitants (…) displaced in dramatic conditions” (PEREIRA, 2007, leaflet distributed in 1966, in the opening ceremony of the bridge over the river Tagus, author translation).

In 1969, Nuno Teotonio Pereira described the results of Estado Novo housing policies, and mentioned the housing issue of the highest number. The issue was the gap between housing needs and resources to meet those needs, the restrictions in construction and allocation of public housing to lower income population “determinadas categorias da população, chamadas as mais favorecidas ou economicamente débeis”, as well as its progressive character (PEREIRA, 1969: 181).

In the same year, the Ministry of Public Works organized the Conference on Housing Policy at LNEC to discuss the issue; reference is made to John Turner’s experience in Peru, in reconstructing and improving barricades (informal neighbourhoods), where the PREVI neighbourhood would be built[22], a model for Nuno Portas. The need for more public investment in housing was made evident especially considering the low quality of private construction. Fundo de Fomento à Habitação (FFH) was created during the III Plano de Fomento, in Decree-Law no. 49 033, dated March 28.

FFH aimed to build about 50 000 houses, finance the construction of the Chelas Plan, and launch integrated plans, such as those in Almada, Bela Vista and Zambujal. After the Revolution, Nuno Portas was appointed Secretary of State for Housing in the First Provisional Government. He launched the new housing policies of the democracy: Serviço de Apoio Ambulatório Local (S.A.A.L.), Cooperativas de Habitação Económica, Renovação Urbana, Contratos de Desenvolvimento Habitacional, and maintained the integrated plans.

These policies were only feasible in a short period of time due to the experience and research carried out by Nuno Portas in the journal Arquitectura, to the fact that Portas had coordinated LNEC research nucleus, taught at ESBAL, and to his experience in the studio. According to Gonçalo Byrne, Nuno Portas had an A5 file system at LNEC about international projects they studied, which he took to his different workplaces and were used in the trips that architects would take in Europe. While he was a student, Gonçalo Byrne took a trip to London, where he visited the Great London Council, at a time when the second generation of the English New Towns were under construction; he visited Thamesmead and Roehampton in London. Later, with Antonio Reis Cabrita, he travelled through Europe, visited Park Hill, Sheffield, in Leeds, Robin Hood Gardens by Alison and Peter Smithson, the German Siedlungen and housing projects in the Netherlands from the 1920/30s.

Nuno Portas’ files provided information about Carlo Aymonino and Aldo Rossi’s project Quartiere Gallaratese, although the construction would be contemporary to that of Pantera Cor-de-Rosa.

Figure 5 – “Pantera Cor-de-Rosa” Housing – East corner of the building (Source: Archive Gonçalo Byrne)

5 _ Future

“The matter of time is very important in Architecture: the project remains in the long course of History and resists or not; it adapts or not; it is totally handed to its users; and it can be dropped and left to erosion.” (BYRNE, 2022: 46, author translation)

The implosion of Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens or James Stirling’s Runcorn New Town, in 1990, similar to the demolition of post-European public housing schemes, or the case of Pruitt-Igoe in the United States, proved to have been a mistake: in terms of collective memory and culture (maintained through these architectural works continuing to be studied, shared and deemed high quality); as well as in terms of public policy, in public goods being privatized and replaced by market prices whose aim is solely private profit.

In the case of DeFlat Kleiburg in Amsterdam, winner of the Mies van der Rohe 2017 award, NL Architects and XVW architectuur, together with builders, proposed refurbishing a grand-ensemble of housing in the Netherlands, a 400m-long building with 11 floors and 400 flats. The refurbishing and the publicity around it drew attention to the need to stop the implosions of 20th century heritage buildings and allowed for the possibility of rehabilitating housing schemes.

In Conflict, Portuguese Representation at Biennale di Venezia 2021[23], showed two recent implosions in Portuguese territory, media events that served a partial political discourse: the demolition of two of the towers in Troia by Conceicao e Silva studio and the demolition of the neighbourhood Aleixo in 2011 in Porto. Though these buildings no longer exist, the rationale issue of their demolition remains.

The refurbishing and completion of Bouça Neighbourhood, former SAAL operation in Porto, by Alvaro Siza Vieira, can be considered a predecessor. The completion of the project, with the construction of the new blocks and the moving in of new residents, allowed for refurbishing the existing block and keeping the original residents.

Pantera Cor-de-Rosa has resisted the passing of time and its recent history, rather heavy and complex from a social point of view; has adapted to the total absence of the welfare state, its residents have been left on their own and taken full responsibility for the neighbourhood; the building has withstood time, but should we consider its demolition or its refurbishing?

The housing problem, like economy, is a cyclical movement; just like the issue of Il Gattopardo, everything needs to change for everything to remain the same;[24] it is solved in the moment and it reappears later in time, the housing issue is a permanent issue. But we can be sure that the opportunities to try new urban and architectural solutions are possibilities in the search for making the city better, one that withstands time.

Figure 6 – Housing “Pantera Cor-de-Rosa”. Photo by Daniel Malhão, September 2015 (Source: Archive Gonçalo Byrne).

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Other resources

DIAS, Ana Sousa – Por Outro Lado VI – Gonçalo Byrne. Programa RTP de 26 Dezembro 2006. [Consult. junho 2022] Disponível em: https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/goncalo-byrne-2/

NEVES, Victor; LOPES, Carlos (autoria); GONÇALVES, Ricardo (realização) – Atelier d’Arquitectura. Programa RTP, Ep. 23, de 19 janeiro 2020, [Consult. junho 2022] Disponível em: https://www.rtp.pt/play/p5644/e451056/atelier-arquitetura

Notes

[1] Article 65 of the Portuguese Constitution: “Todos têm direito, para si e para a sua família, a uma habitação de dimensão adequada, em condições de higiene e conforte e que preserve a intimidade pessoal e a privacidade familiar”

[2] Concept of tabula rasa, Latin term used in Ville Radieuse by Le Corbusier, urban plan presented in 1924 and published in 1933, used to explain the starting point of the modern city on a blank sheet of paper.

[3] Plano Diretor de Lisboa (Main Lisbon Plan), Lisbon, CML 1938-1948, commissioned by the Mayor of Lisbon, engineer Duarte Pacheco, to architect and urban planner Etienne de Gröer, professor at Institut d’urbanisme de l’Université de Paris.

[4] Urbanization Plan for the South of Av. Alferes Malheiro, by Guilherme Faria da Costa, Lisbon, CML 1944; modern post-war neighborhood with large-scale housing construction using social security funds (from Caixas de Previdência).

[5] GTH – Gabinete Técnico de Habitação, the technical office for housing of the Lisbon Municipality, was created in 1959 to solve the city’s housing issues; although initially its action was restricted to the areas of Olivais Norte, Olivais Sul and Chelas Plans, it would later extend its scope to the neighbourhood of Telheiras, among others.

[6] PUC – Chelas Urbanization Plan, 510ha in a 737ha area allocated to Gabinete Técnico de Habitação; it consisted of a Base Plan, coordinated by José Rafael Botelho, approved in 1964, and by partial plans of areas I, J and N2, coordinated by architect Francisco Silva Dias. The team included Joao Reis Machado, Alfredo Silva Gomes, Luis Vassalo Rosa and Carlos Worm.

[7] PREC – Processo Revolucionário em Curso or Período Revolucionário em Curso is the name given to the period between the military coup on April 25, 1974, and the approval of the Portuguese Constitution, in April 1976.

[8] Category I has the lowest budgets and category IV the highest.

[9] Besides the already mentioned team, the teams included Victor Figueiredo, Jorge Gil and Trigo de Sousa, Leopoldo Leal, Artur Pires Martins and Palma de Melo, R. Manuel Vicente and I.. Piñero Nagy, Joao Braula Reis, Henrique Mendia and Teresa Capucho Silva.

[10] Low Rise High Density – advocated by Nuno Portas and studied by the Centre for Land Use and Built Form Studies (LUBFS) in Cambridge, with Leslie Martin.

[11] Divisão de Arquitectura ou Divisão de Construção e Habitação at Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil between 1961 an 1974.

[12] Based on the New Towns Act (1946) and the Town Development Act (1952), the policy of urban development of new cities arose, the three-generation garden-city, in the immediate post- war period, in the late 1940s, most on the outskirts of London, around Patrick Abercrombie’s plan, in the early 1960s, with a mix of innovative programs and architecture and the third generation.

[13] Toulouse-le-Mirail – Grand Ensemble, or large-scale public housing for the new University of Toulouse and public or social housing. Conducted between 1961-1968, by Georges Candilis, Alex Josic and Shadrach Woods.

[14] Name given to pedestrian platforms, paradigm of 1960 urbanism, which separated the road traffic from the sidewalk using concrete slabs, creating a large empty space without function. This was first applied in Toulouse-le-Mirail in 1961 and in the neighbourhood of La Défense in 1964.

[15] “A natureza (…) como uma colecção de coisas materiais cujas razões e relações, a arquitectura tem a missão de revelar.” (GREGOTTI, 2010: p.853)

[16] Cinco Dedos by Vitor Figueiredo, Jorge Gil and Trigo de Sousa, lots 249 to 253 in Chelas Urbanization Plan, 1972-1982.

[17] Alison and Peter Smithson’s concept, developed for the unbuilt proposal of Golden Lane Estate (1952); the first would be built in the Park Hill scheme in Sheffield by architects Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith; the Smithsons would build their concept of streets-in-the-sky in the Robin Hood Gardens scheme, between 1968 and 1972, in London (demolished in 2017). “Urban Structuring” (1967).

[18] Siedlungen – Communities or rationalist housing schemes built between the two World Wars, especially in Frankfurt and Berlin, by Bruno Taut, Ernest May, Walter Gropius or Hans Scharoun, among others.

[19] CABRITA, Antonio Reis – Explanatory annex on Projecto de Comunicação à Obra t à Memória Descritiva do Projecto. Gonçalo Byrne Archive.

[20] Bairro do Relógio – temporary municipal district of prefabricated houses, the type built by the company Sorefame, where some of the displaced population of the Alcantara Valley would be housed during the construction of the bridge over the river Tagus. It was located between Rotunda do Relógio and Azinhaga das Terezinhas. It was demolished in 1999.

[21] “Lisboa Capital do Nada – Marvila” organized in 2001 by the association Extramuros with Mario Caeiro.

[22] PREVI – Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda, an international competition for social housing in the city of Lima, held between 1966 and 1976, managed by the president of Peru, architect Fernando Belaunde Terry. The competition selected projects from 13 Peruvian teams and 13 foreign teams. Among those selected were architects Aldo van Eyck, Atelier 5, Georges Candilis, James Stirling, Charles Correa.

[23] In Conflict, Portuguese representation at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2021, a response to the question asked by Hashim Sarkis, the general curator How will we live together / Como vamos viver juntos?

[24] “Everything must change for everything to remain the same.” IL Gattopardo by Tommaso Lampedusa (1896/1957).