The project "Beyond Modern Housing Heritage of Portuguese Influence, an Optimistic Architecture for Living. Comparative and Multi-Situated Perspectives on Modern Dwellings and Surrounding" explores the innovative design of the modern lifestyle achieved in modern Portuguese expression. Reloading collective housing as the core of optimistic architecture aims to establish a framework of conceptual thinking on the significance of this housing heritage, its preservation, and some of the pivotal issues concerning renewal and valorisation. Considering architecture as a geographically and temporally localised discipline, the guiding idea is to include projects from different territories to avoid generalisations in the interest of reviewing the facts themselves. Comparative studies on residential complexes built after the Second World War will assess the impact of the building boom in Lisbon, Recife, Luanda, Maputo and Macao. The proposal will address how the efforts of Portuguese architects changed colonial strategies regarding daily life. Studying modern domestic spaces will trace their growth and their undoubted contributions to raising challenges and procedures for preserving collective housing, which is an issue at the top of the contemporary agenda. The first level establishes a direct relationship between housing and modernity through spatial planning and architectural analysis, evaluating the quality of the built environment. At the intermediate level, the aim is to distinguish innovative techniques and sustainable approaches, accomplished by a popular architecture survey within technological innovation. To address this question, at a deeper level, I will examine the resilience of these complexes, including the residents' aspirations today, by looking into urban space, typology, (in)formal distribution spaces, and current innovative constructive systems. Confirming that living in awell-lit, airy and energy-efficient house is a decisive variable in future urban life a...

There are professions such as architecture where, despite all what women have achieved, a male hegemony persists and is not very permeable to gender revolutions. This exploratory project aims to identify and describe the struggle of women architects in Portuguese-speaking Africa for career recognition and representation as a consequence of the inequalities inherited from the colonial past. Unanswered research questions have been raised: Who were the women architects working in the former Portuguese colonial territories in Africa? What was their ethnic origin? What was their professional and educational background? What were their struggles for professional recognition? With the independence of these new countries, what roles did these women arch assume? The project seeks to fill a gap in the history of the African countries colonized by the Portuguese – Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, S. Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, and Mozambique – by approaching the condition of the precursor women architects understood as the first professionals to work in these territories. The offer of work during colonial rule was limited to the Colonial Public Works (CPW) and family offices. The transition to independence would bring novelties, such as cooperation programs and the reform of public services. The research will consider these changes in the profession and architectural culture, questioning how women survived and emerged in conditions of extreme labour vulnerability, however sometimes imposing themselves by the lack of technicians. The project will note 2 historical periods: 1953-1974, defined by late colonialism (from the arrival of the first woman architect in Africa, until the African independence); 1975-1985, characterized as the post-independence period (starting from the government transition, until the first woman graduated from the first architecture course at the Agostinho Neto University, Angola). Different types of careers will be addressed in this chronological plot: self-em...

What was the role of Architecture supporting Portuguese colonialism during the colonial war (1961-74)? Starting from the scarce bibliography that questions Architecture, Colonialism and War (He17;He18), but also pondering the interplay between Violence and Colonialism (LuMo14), the research focuses on the production of Housing during the liberation wars in the former Portuguese C ontinental Africa, and its repercussions in the immediate post-independence of Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique. It entails 2 phases: 1)assessment of the housing production carried out in the last 14 years of colonialism (and late Salazarism), considering the colonial society and the 3 agents of Colonial Public Works (C PW) involved, through archival and documentary treatment, cartography and historical description; 2)its identification and critical analysis in the immediate period of 1974/75 (abandonment, reconfiguration, appropriation) and its contribution to inequality in access and housing quality (plastic, technical, functional) by post-independence societies. The research explores the role of war in the emergence of control mechanisms based on Architecture and Urbanism, taking housing as epicentral. It observes 3 scenarios: a) Middle-class and affordable urban expansion neighborhoods, built over slums, to lodge and control populations; b) Settlements located in strategic economic areas; c) Rural resettlements resulting from the massive displacement of African peasants. A continuous reading between colonization and post-independence will be traced, relating the current right to housing with the different residential infrastructures inherited from the colonial period. In the 1st phase, the study considers 3 groups of inhabitants involved in colonial narratives: a) European settlers; b) Assimilados; c) African populations. It analyzes urban and rural landscapes and identifies the 3 main colonial agents: a)Self-employed Architects, in urban environments, using the architectural cultur...

The main challenge of this Cost Action is to create a transnational network that gathers European researchers carrying studies on Middle-Class Mass Housing (MCMH) built in Europe since the 1950s. This network will allow the development new scientific approaches by discussing, testing and assessing case studies and their different methodologies and perspectives. MCMH has been generally underestimated in urban and architectural studies and there is still a lack of comparative analysis and global perspectives. The number of transnational publications and scientific meetings has also been scarce. By crossing different approaches focus on Architecture, Urbanism, Planning, Public Policies, History, Sociology new concepts and methodologies will arise. Therefore, the Action aims to produce a wider understanding of MCMH sprawl, deepening on-going researches and focusing on the existing case studies. The current methodologies, surveys, catalogue and contextualization allow an initial mapping of relevant case studies, their diverse degrees of resilience and how they have been adapted to current (urban and social) conditions. It is intended to develop the knowledge of the interaction between spatial forms, behaviours and satisfaction and to combine methodologies of architectural and social analyses. The Action will be developed by three Working Groups, coordinated by a Core Group: Documenting the MCMH; Development of a specific set of (new) concepts for MCMH analyses; Leverage contemporary architecture interventions and Public Policies. In the Action will be involved researchers related to Mass Housing, MCMH Architecture and Urbanism, Planning and Public Policies, Sociological studies, Architecture History and Modern Heritage.

The goal of the project is to carry out a compared analysis of Middle Class Mass Housing (MCMH) in Europe, Africa and Asia, introducing new case studies to deepen the existing research, made with successfully tested methodologies: survey, catalogue and contextualization of housing complexes built between the 1950s and the 1980s in Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Angola and China. It is intended to identify the existing housing and urban models and to map the changes after 50 years of use in order to understand how they have adapted to current (urban and social) conditions, and to support future actions. The case studies are located in the peripheries of Milan, Antwerp, Lisbon, Luanda and Macao, in areas that they helped to consolidate, and were selected by: 1) scale; 2) number of inhabitants; 3) accessibility; 4) urban and architectural quality. Based on on-going national studies, a cross-reading that reflects the expansion of cities in the context of demographic growth after WWII is proposed. The impact of residential models developed by architects in European contexts will be analysed, and also their transposition to territories formerly under colonial rule. The studies that analyse the transcontinental housing panorama under an architectural and sociological perspective are confined to some regional cases, not assuring a more global vision that includes: 1) the historical description of the physical evolution of the dwelling, the building and the neighbourhood; 2) the survey and analysis of their inhabitants' profile. We want to assess the resilience of these complexes, including testing and proposing ways to prolong its life by updating the functional organization of the apartments, by renewing the infrastructures and building systems and by outlining the profile of its residents. Special attention will be given to the way of promotion (public or private) and its effect on the profile of the current inhabitants (pioneer, recent, immigrant). The neighbourhoods are char...

The ongoing post-doctoral research on the Modern Movement in Sub-Saharan Africa aims to recover a vision of modern architecture as a formal system still in force today, connecting local culture with global influence [SFRH/BPD/117157/2016]. It focuses on Portuguese-Angolan tropical architecture's potential, highlighting Castro Rodrigues, Simões de Carvalho and Vieira da Costa. These three authors' legacy represents Portuguese-Angolan architecture's potential, underlining this singular heritage's iconic, tectonic and programmatic qualities and its political, social, disciplinary and ideological motivations. However, the fight for independence and the subsequent conflicts in Angola interrupted this impulse-momentum, recognizing modernity as an unfinished project. Despite recognizing the fragility of these buildings without maintenance for more than fifty years, the majority still show a surprising kind of resilience. The proposed project methodology highlights the constructive and formal elements that solve innovatively and efficiently the site's adaptability. It aims to contribute to the urgency of elaborating sustainable proposals in the framework of maintaining and re-using modern housing complexes in the 21st century.