NUNO TEOTÓNIO PEREIRA 1950-1970 ARCHITECTURE AS A POLITICAL PRATICE

José António Bandeirinha

Architect, Professor Catedrático do Departamento de Arquitectura da Universidade de Coimbra

How to quote this article: BANDEIRINHA, José António – Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1950- 1970. Architecture as a political practice. Estudo Prévio. Lisbon: CEACT/UAL – Centro de Estudos de Arquitetura, Cidade e Território of Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, 2016. ISSN: 2182-4339 [accessible at: www.estudoprevio.net]

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

Abstract

Citizens’ participation in decisions concerning their living environment is a theme that nowadays opens up a very wide range of meanings related to architecture and the organization of urban space. Many reflections have been made from these meanings, in the fields of architectural practices, theory of architecture and sociology. But there has been less reflection about the historical dimension of these meanings, as we treat them as if they have emerged recently under the auspices of contemporary politics, almost as if it were possible to refer them in the light of a non-historical analysis.

This article focuses on the political and professional practices of Nuno Teotónio Pereira throughout the 1950s and 1960s, reflecting also on their mutual relationship, a connection that makes it difficult to distinguish between these fields of action.

Keywords: Participation, Post-War History of Architecture, 20th Century, Architecture and Politics.

Citizens’ participation in decisions concerning their living environment is a theme that nowadays opens up a very wide range of meanings related to architecture and the organization of urban space. Many reflections have been made from these meanings, in the fields of architectural practices, theory of architecture and sociology. But there has been less reflection about the historical dimension of these meanings, as we treat them as if they have emerged recently under the auspices of contemporary politics, almost as if it were possible to refer them in the light of a non-historical analysis. And yet, what we now call participation also concerns ancestral practices, as old and traditional as the social organization of the communities that conceive and build their respective life environments. Nowadays there are initiatives that are insinuated as being innovative, if this anxiety is legitimated by the popular and democratic shades which these types of action have. Still, nothing justifies the ignorance of similar practices in recent history, perhaps not so much covered by the media, but certainly performed under much more adverse political and cultural conditions. In the second half of the 1950s, Portugal had already given up hope regarding the opening announced by the 1945 armistice, in the face of the constant intensification of repression and ideological control. And yet, one of the most consistent experiences in the area of user participation dates back to precisely the same time. It was accomplished as part of a work carried out in the studio of Nuno Teotónio Pereira for the Associação dos Inquilinos Lisbonenses (Lisbon Tenants’ Association) – AIL, an association founded by anarchists in 1924 to defend the interests of house tenants.

At that time, in 1956-1957, the AIL operated on the basis of an agreement which its anarchist leaders had established with the Communist Party, and described itself as being interested in promoting what it called the “cooperative tenancy” aimed at filling a gap that existed in housing cooperatives.

In most cases, housing cooperatives in Portugal were aimed at the middle classes, for the construction of their dwellings, without any prospect of openness to the so-called social housing. António Sérgio, who was then in charge of the Boletim Cooperativista, was closely linked to the AIL, and is believed to have encouraged this association to become a cooperative entity as well[i].

According to this concept of cooperative tenancy, which was a compromise between simple tenancy and direct access to property, cooperative members would not become homeowners but rather tenants of the cooperative entity that promoted and built them. Through the Lisbon City Hall, they were promised land in Ajuda, and the project for a set of collective housing blocks, with 100 houses in total, was given to Nuno Teotónio Pereira and Bartolomeu Costa Cabral.

A proposal was then made containing four “T-shaped” plan modules, with twenty- five apartments each. The distribution was made according to a gallery, complete in the four floor blocks and partial in the ones with two floors. In the former, an apparent stone basement enclosed the common areas and the doorman’s dwelling, and conferred on the buildings another of the many signs of an almost obsessive quest for alternatives to the precepts of the International Style[ii].

Parallel to this initiative, the AIL organized an exhibition at the National Society of Fine Arts whose theme was “Housing Cooperativism in the World” in order to expand its reach and dissemination. The exhibition, which ran from 30 March to 7 April 1957 and was widely disseminated by the media at the time, was intended to divulge the success of cooperative housing in several countries in the world, with a special focus on Northern Europe[iii].

The responsibility for setting it up was given to an architect, Frederico George, assisted by Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Bartolomeu Costa Cabral and Nuno Portas[iv]. The invitation to architects to promote conferences and other cultural initiatives was, moreover, one of the traditions of the AIL which was repeated here. In addition to the exhibition, there was also a cycle of conferences opened by a talk by Fernando Távora on the topic “What a house is”.

The exhibition and the conferences were very popular. In addition to several entities, including the Minister of Corporations, they were attended by over ten thousand people[v]. However, the main attractions were those contained in the aforementioned project of Teotónio Pereira and Costa Cabral. The exhibition of drawings and models was complemented by the display of a life-size type house. Built by a well-known construction company[vi] with the support of many others that equipped it and finished it in detail, the house enabled people to walk inside, criticizing it and testing the potentialities of its use. In the end, visitors had access to a small survey on the house[vii], which asked their opinion about specific options of the project – materials, spatial relations, location of rooms, etc. – as well as their more general impressions of the house[viii].

The 1957 “Housing Cooperativism in the World” exhibition was one of the most relevant attempts to raise awareness of the housing issue through the dissemination of the extremely rich experiences that the post-war period had generated in Europe and everywhere, even bringing the discussion closer to very concrete matters, such as house use, although at official level the results were practically non-existent[ix].

But it is also important to note one of the first experiences in the field of the so- called user participation, with the subsequent inquiry, that is, the consultation had no vague analytical sense, as it was based on the direct observation of impressions, in loco and before an architecture offered on a plate, almost like a fait accompli.

But it was in the early 1960s that, for Nuno Teotónio Pereira, the housing issue definitively became a hinged theme between political action and professional practice. Under the aegis of the National Union of Architects, a Conference on the housing issue was held at the Galveias Palace on 11-14 February 1960, where the “Social Aspects in Housing Construction” were discussed. The organizing committee included Nuno Portas, Peres Fernandes, the President of the Union, Rui Mendes Paula, Raúl Ramalho, Bartolomeu Costa Cabral, Octávio Filgueiras and Coutinho Raposo, in addition to two French guests, urban planner and architect Robert Auzelle and sociologist Chombard de Lauwe. The former spoke of his urban experience in Porto, where he was a consultant to the municipality, and the latter spoke about the sociological implications of the use of housing, referring to specific cases of massive construction in France. He disseminated the results of surveys carried out in the large French social districts, which revealed the serious consequences caused by the inadequacy of the inhabitants to the spaces they used. He then talked about the need to design environments according to the social and psychological specificities of each stratum. Nuno Portas presented a paper on the topic “Problems with the family house”, which was later praised by Teotónio Pereira for being a work that simultaneously problematized “sociology and spatial critique”x. The main conclusions of this conference included the need to establish a “Section of the ‘Habitat’ Psycho-sociological Problems” and an “Institute of Housing and Urbanism”; the need to perceive housing as a social problem, in order to avoid that “in the case of the most disadvantaged classes … financial reasons may justify programming below the ‘critical limits’ of habitability”; finally, it was recommended that equipment, whether of the actual house or of the housing complexes, should be programmed according to the particular requirements of each of the “human groups” for which they are intended[xi]. Later in 1965, in a hopeful text about the desired insertion of housing issues in the Interim Development Plan, in which the signs of hope were tempered by strong critical recommendations, Nuno Teotónio Pereira insisted on the absolute necessity of “obtaining the collaboration of the users’ representatives from all sectors[xii]”, without whom all the best intentions to develop an effective housing policy would fail.

By the end of the decade, and following the construction of the bridge over the Tagus, it became necessary to unclog the entire Alcântara Valley, which was densely built with spontaneous housing areas. In a first phase, some years before, the slums that prevented the construction of accesses to the bridge deck had been demolished. Later, as the inauguration date approached, the “sanitation” operations become more systematic and had the purpose of “cleaning up” the environment around the bridge. This “cleaning up” operation was also completed with the Brigades of the City Council whitewashing the part that was “left” of the demolitions – Casal Ventoso – before the inauguration of the bridge. The relocations resulting from these operations, hastily executed and badly planned, generated dramatic situations framed by absolute despotism, by the silence imposed on the media and by the fatality of an almost passive reaction on the part of the victimized populations. There were three types of relocations: prefabricated houses in iron plate constructed by a company that produced railway rolling stock, in the called Relógio Neighborhood; roughly built housing units with brick masonry walls for hypothetical posterior finishing; and the reconstruction of the slums with the materials reused from those that had been demolished. These last two modalities were built in a local area, Quinta da Musgueira. Either place was extremely far from Alcântara, at the other end of the city. The Lisbon City Hall, which was the entity responsible for rehousing, tried to guarantee some infrastructure and ensure the transportation of goods and building materials to be reused.

Nuno Teotónio Pereira then decided to denounce the inhuman conditions of the operation in detail, both the transfer as a fait accompli and the prior circumstances. He wrote a clandestine pamphlet expressing his indignation at the circumstances of the whole process. Some of the most significant included: the rationale for these later demolitions – it was no longer a matter of clearing the accesses, but of getting rid of compromising images; the violent change from a more central area, where the inhabitants already had their life and roots, to a more peripheral zone, more complicated from the point of view of accessibility; to make matters worse, the lack of coordination, information and assistance to the displaced people, who were literally thrown into the municipal vehicles, totally unaware of what awaited them at the destination; the overt discrimination regarding the type of rehousing, with criteria based on race, number of children and even the legal status of the people; finally, the “complicity” of the religious organizations involved who, through charitably supporting the operation, were implicitly agreeing with it[xiii]. Teotónio Pereira’s denunciation reveals deep knowledge of the problem and a political commitment that goes far beyond the mere technical evaluation of the evidence. Urban issues are, first and foremost, issues pertaining to the people who inhabit the city. His combination of professional practice with political practice was revealed in the 1960s, in two more important occasions: his involvement in the Housing Problem Conference organized by the AIL and held in Lisbon in June 1967; and in the Urbanism Conference held in Funchal in January 1969. In the first event, which he helped organizing with Margarida Sousa Lobo, Nuno Portas, Carlos Duarte, Bruto da Costa, Sérvulo Correia, Emídio Santana, Raúl da Silva Pereira, Nelson Montes and many others, there was also a Frenchman involved, the Vice President of the Federation of Housing Cooperatives – HLM – Guy Houist, who gave two talks, one on the right to housing, and another on the cooperative experience of HLM since its inception[xiv].

In the second, he made a presentation entitled “Dwellings for the greatest number”xv, where he analysed the housing situation in Portugal in depth, referring both to studies already carried outxvi and to the preparatory work of the Third Development Plan, and then discussed the wasted possibilities for solving the housing problem.

Examining the successive national experiences in the area of large-scale public housing promotion – Alvalade and Olivais in Lisbon and the Improvement Plan in Porto – he concluded that integrated and effective housing programmes would only be possible if coordinated by a centralizing institution – the National Institute of Housing. He explained who the “greatest number” for whom it is necessary to build was: the growing mass of “badly housed people, kept on the fringes of the urban environment that attracted them; without the resources to obtain adequate housing within the conventional schemes”xvii. In his view, it was not only a quantitative matter, of scale, it was first and foremost a question of addressing all the specific constraints and of building not exhaustive sums of houses but organized and equipped urban groups”xviii. He concluded that the housing issue was not a fragmentary problem to be solved with the construction of some neighbourhoods or some houses, but rather a social symptom, with a dynamic and comprehensive dimension, that was urgent to face in a broader, more structuring perspective, requiring appropriate political action that allowed “using the instruments needed to solve the problems concerning it”[xix].

A part in the text when Nuno Teotónio Pereira focused on what he called “unused resources” was also of very particular significance. He asserted that the self- construction of the so-called clandestine settlements, built as a process that was marginal to conventional market systems, was not adequately enhanced as an alternative possibility of solving the housing deficit problem. Giving several reasons for this waste of resources, he emphasized the authorities’ preference for resolutions of the paternalistic or authoritarian type, to the detriment of the incentive to the “people’s” commitment. Although in a generic way, he also gave examples of experiences in North Africa, the Middle East and Latin America[xx], and others of conclusive proximity, although never officially recognized, such as the Liberdade Neighbourhood, on the slopes of Monsanto, which had been a cluster of slums and had become a “near” normal housing area. He admitted that large suburban extensions of clandestine construction suffer from the same speculative market mechanisms as those in legal circuits, but argued that such processes could be conveniently worked upon from a technical point of view, both with regard to urban planning of infrastructures and equipment and to isolated buildings, thus suggesting that the dynamics of these parallel markets should be framed by correct programming, planning and projects, alongside the house building “natural” dynamics. In addition, and always incorporating the predicted economic prosperity of the residents, the technical solution should also control the growth and improvement of the house.

But the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s intensified the already irreversible fragmentation of the left, increased internationally by the advance of the Sino- Soviet schism, by the widespread opposition to the Vietnam War, by the events of May 1968, and by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the USSR. This fragmentation was already having repercussions in all the circumstances where the work of the Portuguese intelligentsia was manifest. In the beginning of December 1969, in the aftermath of the elections, the National Meeting of Architects (ENA) was held in Lisbon at the National Society of Fine Arts. Summoned by a group of professionals who were institutionally disengaged from the National Trade Union of Architects, the initial purpose of the ENA was to take advantage of the general “debate some of the great national problems far beyond the limited circles in which such problems are usually circumscribed” in order to promote “awareness of the role of the architect in the current Portuguese society” and “to study the forms of intervention in the process of enlightenment and public discussion”xxi that had been triggered. One of the members of Nuno Teotónio Pereira’s studio, Nuno Portas, did not participate directly in the ENA because he was absent. However, he sent a message of overwhelming critical significance, not so much regarding the social context that involves the exercise of the profession, but essentially the immobilism that prevented Architecture from asserting itself in society. He criticized “the frequent use of the sympathetically radical alibi that ‘structures must first be changed’ in order to do little or nothing, in terms of effectiveness, to change structures, or to seek in the studio or in the offices the best solutions and the most effective procedures to impose them, even if not achieving them, at least demonstrating their viability”xxii. Nuno Portas proposed to the ENA a methodological approach that was fearlessly above the sterile continuation of the theoretical discussion about the social impasses of the profession. The ENA’s actions included direct action and performance, and in one of these interventions a violent reaction was staged against some fetish objects of the architect’s professional activity. Perhaps everyone noticed that it was a performance, perhaps the background sound was not that of the International, but the fact is that there were destroyed boards and stretchers, like the cars and pavements in the Latin Quarter about twenty months earlier[xxiii]. Keil do Amaral, for his part, criticized the waste of the possibility of a great ideological contest, annulled as it was by the proliferation of small one-off contestations and joked when affirming that the only exit for the encounter was through the door[xxiv].

In the end, despite diverse opinions and divisions, the idea that the meeting had not been exhausted in the days of its realization and that it should be permanent set in. And some working groups were established to focus on more specific themes[xxv].

In the three months that followed the ENA, there was a tenacious intention to extend its inconclusive truths to the limit of the “permanent meeting status”, hoping that the sociological fringes of the discipline would flourish and bear fruit. In the early 1970s, in addition to the practice of architecture, Nuno Teotónio Pereira’s studio in Rua da Alegria also served as a meeting point for several agitation and reflection groups, which were anxious for the start of urban movements, similar to those that were rising in the main cities of Europe and whose echoes, partly also through Nuno Portasxxvi, had been resounding. Nuno Teotónio, who had worked intensively in the organization and preparation of the ENA, was now more interested in this activism dynamics regarding social movements, particularly the actions of the group “Popular participation and activity of the architect”. This group, which continued to meet during the first months of 1970, began by discussing the texts presented at the meeting. It then made some attempts at local work, starting to receive requests for collaboration with “local animators”xxvii. From this activity, the Urban Intervention Group (GRIMU), initially called Intervention Group for Urban Development (GIDU) was formed, whose objectives, although divided in different action fronts, were consigned to an idea of agitation and propaganda to be carried out by technicians more engaged in social action in the suburbs and neighbourhoods with living conditions problems or equipment shortages. This work followed not only the ENA, but also some movements initiated during the 1969 electoral campaign by activists of the Electoral Democratic Commissions – CDE – and some isolated social actions that were taking place in the most degraded suburban areas. The GRIMU consisted of about thirty people, a large majority – about twenty-four – architects, trainee architects and architecture students, the rest being engineers and social workers[xxviii]. Privileging the suburban area of Lisbon, and within it, the south bank of the Tagus, since the effects of wild speculation were more evident there, the purposes of the group were initially very focused on the discovery of pockets of social discontent that could generate alternative forms of technical support.

This way, two objectives were outlined: on the one hand, agitation and propaganda actions among the affected populations, exposing and clarifying the causes of their housing and urban problems; on the other hand, the preparation of “technically sound counter-proposals” which, contrary to current trends, planned or not, embodied local aspirations[xxix]. These “necessarily interdisciplinary” proposals[xxx] were presented as alternative solutions flagging up the claims of the inhabitants, thus revealing an inescapable analogy with the Italian contropiani who, at the same time, made their way in the effulgent effervescence of the quartiere struggles[xxxi]. However, despite all these goals, the repercussions of the GRIMU activity were not very consistent both on the ground and in the concrete area of social practice[xxxii].

Also by this time, the unshakable cooperative conviction of Nuno Teotónio Pereira, which had been nourished by his active and leading participation in the Pragma cultural cooperative, continued even after its closure in 1967. Since the mid-1960s, cultural co-operatives constituted “a skilful resource on the part of some opposition political currents to overcome the juridical difficulties that the regime raised to the free exercise of the right of association”xxxiii. However, the Pragma Cooperative was closed by decision of the Minister of Home Affairs, following its civic and associative intervention activity[xxxiv], and its leaders were detained by the political police. But another cultural cooperative, headquartered in Porto, called Confronto, which had managed to maintain its activity, promoted a conference on the topic “Urban Claim and Socio-political Context”. To this end, it decided to invite a group from Lisbon composed of Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Margarida Sousa Lobo and Pedro Vilas-Boas, later joined by Alberto Oliveira, Cristina Leiria, Francisco Silva Alves and João Paciência. From this group, together with the fragile field experience and follow-up of some actions, the more specific subject of the conference emerged: information on urban struggles in the light of the international context and, above all, the perspectives of political success for urban claims’ movements. And it was precisely with this purpose in mind that the cooperative management distributed a number of informative documents that disseminated various actions in Europe and even in Portugal, especially those produced by the Italian group Il Manifesto, as well as the text presented to the ENA on “Popular Participation and Work of the Architect”[xxxv]. In an intervention at the same conference, Nuno Teotónio Pereira advocated, in a particularly motivating excerpt, the creation of “co-operatives […] of dwellers in a particular area that created a planning technical service with paid technicians […] who could present alternative counterproposals, prepare counterplans, criticize plans but with a technically founded critique”[xxxvi]. In this excerpt lies perhaps the strongest idea of the whole presentation. For the author, one of the most tempting effects of the mobilization around urban contestations or demands was to be able to give voice to a group of technicians who would voluntarily choose the client on the contesting side of the conflictive barricade, that is, with the counterplans hypothesis, two possible problems of this type of social involvement would be solved at once: the most engaging planning professionals would be given the possibility of having a coherent practice, or at least not inconsistent with their political consciousness, and at the same time technical and scientific know-how would be conferred to the action’s direct agents and to all those who allegedly did not have it, and would therefore be in a state of inequality in the struggle. These last years of the regime were years of troubled political and social contexts. The Catholic Left was deeply committed to the anticolonial struggle, and Nuno Teotónio was also organizing the publication of the Sete cadernos sobre a Guerra Colonial (Seven Notebooks on the Colonial War), a compilation of texts by various authors[xxxvii]. In 1971, he gave an interview to the ORTF about anti-fascist resistance in Portugal. The events after the vigils at the Rato Chapel resulted in his arrests by the political police in 1972 and 1973.

In the continuous practice of the studio and, simultaneously, social and political reflection, his more or less occasional absences were filled by his closest colleagues. Olivais-Norte, with its 40 hectares, was a kind of launching ramp of the intervention that followed, in Olivais-Sul, with about 180 hectares. The plan of the first, although simple, as Nuno Portas described it[xxxviii[, and, to a certain extent, still rooted in modern models, paved the way to the objective meaning of built units. There, Nuno Teotónio Pereira, with António Freitas and Nuno Portas, were rehearsing solutions that presupposed the distribution of the buildings along a central atrium, with a vertical circulation box and the star-shaped positioning of the dwellings. In Chelas in 1972, Gonçalo Byrne and Reis Cabrita designed a complex of 382 dwellings, which would later become known as the “pink panther”. It was a proposal aimed at “reinventing” the urban references, where the plan was indifferent to them. In an area where buildings were objectively seen in spaces left over from the road, this housing complex was founded on the desire to internalize a more stable and self-integrating urban order, within which the appeals for traditional urban structures may be recognizable. The buildings, although marked by a rhythm of events on the facade, which give them a certain transparency of their internal functions, are prolifically marked by varied spatial areas, galleries, walkways, stairs, columns of vertical access. They never lose, however, the geometrical sense of mass, a kind of volumetric essence which is surely conferred to them by the lessons of brutalism. The principle of a critical recovery of a more identitarian urban environment – high densities, low height and more controlled public spaces – had already been pursued, in fact, since the Restelo Plan, also from the studio, with Nuno Portas, Pedro Botelho and João Paciência, in 1971-1972. Although in a programmatic distinct context – housing standards were generally higher – the Restelo plan and its first buildings played a significant role in the context of housing proposals in the early seventies.

First due to the attempt to shape a city image in which typological diversity could be sublimated into the order and unity of the whole, but also through the use of a language which, disregarding any kind of latent commitment, love or hatred, to the international style, was rooted in an uncompleted homage to the first modernism and the Siedlunguian projections of a more balanced urban civilization.

However, and as Portas himself had written in those years, “the emphasis placed on the possibilities of the urban as an integrating concept does not mean that problems are magically solved; it will only allow us not to overlook the complex systems of relations between the scales of intervention and, above all, not to intervene without a clear strategy referring to a strong concept and a global image project that can express the dynamics of urban society and culture”[xxxix].

The dawn of 25 April 1974 caught Nuno Teotónio Pereira in the political prison of Caxias. On the night of 26 to 27, Friday to Saturday, the single television channel broadcasted live the opening of the jail doors, the reporter with the microphone describing the situation, the camera focusing on the doors, the released prisoners beginning to leave.

One of the first to appear is an architect.

Coimbra, June 2016

José António Bandeirinha

[i] (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1954-1969 folder) and Interview with Nuno Teotónio Pereira recorded on 23 June 1998.

[ii] This project was the culmination of an already long series of research around these housing typologies, which had consolidated with the drawings for another housing cooperative, which Teotónio Pereira and Costa Cabral were part of, along with well-known Portuguese intellectuals, such as António Ferreira da Costa, Francisco Lino Neto, Elísio Summavielle, Francisco Keil do Amaral and many others —Cooperativa de Construção e Habitação. The first drawings of this project, whose similarities with the AIL are very evident, date back to 1954 (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1954-1969 folder).

[iii] There were cooperative construction solutions from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Italy, France, the United States, Canada, England, Switzerland, Belgium, Malaysia, Argentina, Israel, Poland, the Netherlands, and Germany, besides Portugal and an area reserved for international organizations with influence on housing problems, such as the United Nations, the International Labour Organization and the International Co-operative Alliance. Cf. O Cooperativismo Habitacional do Mundo Exposição organized by the Associação dos Inquilinos Lisbonenses (A.I.L. Lisbon T enants’ Association) (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1954-1969 folder). On the dissemination and success of the initiative see, among others, news published in Diário Ilustrado, Diário de Lisboa, Diário de Notícias, Diário Popular, República, as well the A.I.L. own bulletin.

[iv] Who had just joined the studio of Nuno Teotónio Pereira in 1956.

[v] Cf. press of the time, in particular, Lisbon Tenants’ Association Year VIII, 25, September 1957.

[vi] Sociedade de Construções Amadeu Gaudêncio, Lda.

[vii] Answering the following questions may contribute to better housing (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1954-1969 folder).

[viii] The most significant of the answers was one given by a lady and transcribed by the newspaper República, 5-4-1957: “[the house], within its level, is ideal and I can assure you that 90 per cent of Portuguese women would want to have it”.
[ix] The Minister of Cooperations, Veiga de Macedo, although having visited the exhibition for about two hours, was not very conclusive about the possibilities of state commitment to support housing cooperativism. He made comparisons, noting with satisfaction “the urban and architectural similarity of some solutions presented by the various countries with what is being done in Alvalade and Cascais” and rejecting “some solution proposals” such as those presented by France with its ‘cells’ built in Marseilles, with inner streets, in the buildings themselves […], vast areas of reinforced cement, ungainly, apparently porous and sombre”. On the way out, the minister “congratulated the exhibition organizers and expressed the wish of a meeting in which some of the common aspects related to the Economic Houses and Cooperativism could be discussed. – We are, after all, working on the same crop! – he concluded […], thus presupposing that ethical aspects should not overlap with those of the very substance of the problem”. Diário de Lisboa, 6-4-1957.

[x] Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Op. Cit., p. 36.

[xi] Ib., and Associação dos Inquilinos Lisbonenses, Year XI, 36, September 1957.
[xii] Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Op. Cit., p. 54.
[xiii] Cf. Ib. pp. 56-67; and interview with Nuno Teotónio Pereira, recorded on 23 June 1998.
[xiv] Boletim Cooperativista, 170, January 1968; Associação dos Inquilinos Lisbonenses, Year XIX, 67, March 1968; and (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1954-1969 folder).
[xv] Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Op. Cit., pp. 78-97, partially transcribed in Arquitetura Magazine, 110, pp. 181-183.
[xvi] In particular, those by Raúl da Silva Pereira, Habitação e Urbanismo em Portugal, Lisbon, author’s edition, 1966.
[xvii] Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Op. Cit., p. 84.
[xviii] Ib., p. 80.
[xix] Ib., p. 83.
[xx] Nuno Teotónio Pereira received in Lisbon, probably in January 1972 when he gave a conference at LNEC, Brazilian architect Carlos Nelson dos Santos, whose slum reconversion work in Rio de Janeiro was already reasonably known. He then took him to visit the outskirts of Lisbon – Brandoa – at the time a true Mecca of underground housing promotion. The Brazilian’s reaction, astounded by what he saw, surprised him a little: “[Carlos Nelson said to me] How wonderful! […] It seems New York, with those towers, little skyscrapers, what a beautiful thing! Were the villagers able to build all this? [I replied] “There are speculators in the middle, of course. It is not just the residents themselves. Some are the residents, but the higher floors belong to speculators, who rent them later”. Interview with Nuno Teotónio Pereira recorded on 23 June 1998.
[xxi] Circular Letter from the Meeting Preparatory Commission, Lisbon, 6 November 1969 (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1954-1969 folder).
[xxii] Arquitetura e Sociedade Portuguesa, message from Nuno Portas at the Architects National Meeting, December 69 (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1954-1969 folder).
[xxiii] Cf. Alexandre Alves Costa, Dissertation Expressly Elaborated for the Qualification Contest to Obtain the Title of Aggregate Professor and Constituting Original Work on the Subject Respecting the Subject of the 1st. Group of the Architecture Degree of the Higher School of Fine Arts of Porto by Alexandre Vieira Pinto Alves Costa in December 1979 that also could be called Disasters of Sofia or Memories of a Donkey, Porto, Edições do Curso de Arquitetura da ESBAP, 1982, p. 81.

[xxiv] Cf. Alexandre Alves Costa, Op. Cit., p. 83 and Sérgio Fernandez, Percurso. Arquitetura Portuguesa 1930/1974, Porto, Edições da Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade do Porto, 1988, p. 176.
[xxv] Cf. Architects National Meeting. Notice no. 6, Lisbon, 12 December 1969, signed by N. Teotónio Pereira, J. Pacheco and G. Câncio; Architects National Meeting. Notice no. 7, Lisbon, 30 December 1969, signed by António Carvalho, Carlos Roxo and Nuno Teotónio Pereira; Architects National Meeting. Notice no. 8, Lisbon, 8 January 1970, signed by L. Vassalo Rosa and Raúl Hestnes Ferreira; Architects National Meeting. Notice no. 9, Lisbon, 15 January 1970, signed by Alberto Oliveira and Luís Filipe Madeira, and Architects National Meeting. Notice no. 10, Lisbon, 30 January 1970, signed by Manuel Moreira and N. Teotónio Pereira (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1954-1969 folder).

[xxvi] Cf. Interview with Nuno Teotónio Pereira, recorded on 23 June 1998. In Italy, especially with the Baraccati and Borgatari movements in Rome and the Rione Traiano in Naples, and also in France, Great Britain, and even in Spain, there were several urban movements demanding better living conditions, either in the degraded areas in the centres, in the shantytowns of the peripheries, and in the new rehousing social neighbourhoods (Nuno Teotónio Pereira, 1970-1973 folder).

[xxvii] Cf. (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1954-1969 folder), particularly the ENA Grupo “PARTICIPAÇÃO POPULAR” Meeting of 16 February 1970 — Annex 2
xxviii Intervention Group for Urban Development. Questionnaire. (Nuno Teotónio Pereira, 1970- 1973 folder).

[xxix] GIDU. Grupo de Intervenção para o Desenvolvimento Urbano (Intervention Group for Urban Development). Programme & Proposal, (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1970-1973 folder); later renamed Grupo de Intervenção no Meio Urbano — GRIMU Base text, Lisbon, 23 March 1970, (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1970-1973 folder); subsequently published in Escritos (1947-1996, seleção), Porto, FAUP Publicações, 1996, pp. 106-111.

[xxx] (Ib.)

[xxxi] The references to the counter-plans are directly established by Nuno Teotónio Pereira in several manuscripts, notes and meetings’ preparatory notes (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1970-1973 folder).

[xxxii] There is concern about the situation in the Setúbal peninsula, since the ferocious effects of speculation, both legal and illegal, are particularly damaging. To this end, and still within the context of ENA, a debate was held on 8 June 1970 at the National Society of Fine Arts on the Master Plan of the National Park of the Península de Setúbal, prepared by Architect José Rafael Botelho, which originated several actions in support of the establishment of natural reserve areas and the fulfilment of this same plan (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1970-1973 folder).

[xxxiii] António Reis, “Cooperativas Culturais”: Fernando Rosas, J. M. Brandão de Brito, (directed by), Dicionário de História do Estado Novo, V. II, s.l., Círculo de Leitores, 1996, pp. 211-212. xxxiv Particularly due to the organization of an itinerant exhibition on the Interim Development Plan that toured various collectivities in the country and was eventually seized by PIDE in Porto”. Cf. Ib. p. 212.

[xxxv] The published texts were as follows: “Groupes Spontanés et Contre-pouvoir”, IDOC international, no. 35, 1 December 1970, Editions du Seuil; “Uma Declaração de Michel Rocard, Secretário-Geral do PSU francês”; “Tre Momenti di Lotta — Napoli, Roma e Torino”, note from the Federation of the Italian PSIUP, according to the newspaper Il Manifesto; “Dalla fabrica alla Societá”, by Lucio Magri in Il Manifesto; “Riformismo e Linea di Classe”, by Aldo Natoli in Il Manifesto; “Teatro Politico Didattico: Il Geometro ovvero lo Scandalo della casa e della città”, by C. G. in Il Manifesto; “Squatters: gli abusivi Hippies”, by C. G. in Il Manifesto; “Urbanismo y Lucha de Classes”, by Alfonso Iglesias García, Eduardo Leira Sánchez, Damián Quero Castanys, Augustín Rodriguez-Bachiller and Ignacio Solana Madariaga; “Habitação, Urbanismo e Desenvolvimento Regional”, political programme of the CDE of Lisbon; “O Caso das 48 Famílias que Ocupavam em Odivelas o Bairro do Bom Sucesso”, information; “Hacia un Sindicalismo Urbanistico”, unpublished text of para el Diálogo; “Participação Popular e Trabalho do Arquiteto”, paper by Nuno Teotónio Pereira at the Architects National Meeting in December 1969. Cf. Confronto Cooperativa de Promoção Cultural, S. C. R. L., Circular I e Circular II, Porto, 14 March 1971, (Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1970-1973 folder).

[xxxvi] Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Op. Cit., p. 137.
[xxxvii] António Melo, José Capela, Luís Moita, Nuno Teotónio Pereira, 7 Cadernos sobre a Guerra Colonial, Porto, Afrontamento, 1974 (republication of clandestine brochure)
[xxxviii] Nuno Portas, A Cidade como Arquitetura, Lisboa, Livros Horizonte, 1969, p. 129.
[xxxix] Ib., p. 195.

* Both the interview referred to as “Interview with Nuno Teotónio Pereira, recorded on 23 June 1998”, and the folder referred to as “(Nuno Teotónio Pereira 1970-1973 folder)” can be read at the 25 de Abril Documentation Centre of the University of Coimbra, along with this text’s author collection. Some of the originals referring to these documents can still be found in the same centre, next to the collection concerning Nuno Teotónio Pereira himself.