The Carnation Revolution (1974-75) entailed the collapse of the old Portuguese colonial empire. The liberation of the former colonies prompted the exit from Angola, Mozambique, Guiné-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe of 500 000 to 800 000 refugees and ‘retornados’ (returnees), who moved to Portugal for a plethora of political, economic and social reasons. It was clear that the Portuguese State did not have the necessary housing stock to settle those newcomers. Thus, after ad-hoc and chaotic temporary solutions, the Fundo de Fomento da Habitação – FFH (Housing Development Fund), a State institution for promoting public housing, set out the Comissão para o Alojamento de Refugiados – CAR (Refugee Housing Commission), a housing programme specifically catering to those uprooted families. The CAR programme reflects the complicated entanglements between decolonization, housing shortage, social inequality and the making of the post-revolutionary territory. And yet, it was never the object of any specific study. The CAR proposed to create estates of prefabricated housing bought by the FFH to private suppliers, with municipalities ensuring the land for the development and promoting the urbanization works. During its short span (1976-1982), with some developments finished later, the CAR was hampered by bureaucratic and technical difficulties. Still, it produced dozens of estates in all of Portugal, from urban to suburban and rural contexts. In some cases, the CAR estates were also used to supply additional housing for locals in need, thus mixing the refugees with people from other rehousing operations. Despite its wide distribution in the territory and the exceptional character of its construction techniques and target demographic, the CAR quickly slipped into oblivion within architectural and urban history. Even in accounts of the experiences of post-colonial refugees, the CAR has been often underestimated. There are several difficulties in studying the CAR programme. Namely, most traditional types of disciplinary analysis – morphological, ethnographical, public policy, residential career – tend to leave out important aspects of the programme. To assess it properly, a methodology capable of absorbing and systematizing elements from multiple forms of analysis is needed. This should be able to encompass the spatial flows of people (residential career of the rehoused, from provenience to relocation) and of materials (the prefabricated housing, from the factory to the estate), the morphology of the housing estates (including housing, public space, equipment and territorial context), as well as aspects of urban process (piecemeal alterations introduced by residents, operations of demolition or of refurbishing) and of social process (what communities were formed in the CAR estates, how they were integrated into Portuguese society). CARnation is intended as a first approach to the CAR programme, seeking mostly to establish a coherent methodology for encompassing its specificities. Because of this focus on methodology design, CARnation proposes to survey only the estates built in the two current Portuguese metropolitan regions (Lisbon and Porto), where the team’s preliminary survey has identified 36 CAR estates. However, it is expected that once the methodology is constructed and tested, it will inform a more ambitious and comprehensive study covering the entirety of the CAR estates. The potential of such a methodology is not exhausted in historical interest nor in the CAR programme. On the one hand, it has the potential to inform studies regarding the reception of refugees and foreigners, with a special emphasis on the spatial and housing conditions they encounter on their new location and how these affect their social integration. On the other hand, the methodology will allow an identification of the advantages and problems of prefabrication, as an optimized response to housing shortage, counting on the successful experiences of refurbishing for potential solutions. The aim is to examine how the prefabricated CAR houses functioned as a mean to face a moment of crisis (relocation and resource-scarcity) and in the post-occupancy, until our present times, developing data for future crisis reconstruction based on the historical information and socio-spatial evaluation of the CAR estates evolution throughout time. This will bring about the interest of CARnation for the present: as international geopolitics grew increasingly violent, there are several territories – Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Congo – which have faced destruction and homelessness. Prefabricated housing may be a solution for these cases – but we must assess the potentials and pitfalls of this type of development to conceive these not as a precarious solution, but as an advancement towards reconstruction. CARnation will answer this question based on specific evidence from the built structures and the people who inhabit them.

No records found.

No records found.

No records found.

No records found.

No records found.

No records found.

With the objective to increase the research activity directed towards the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the possibility of associating scientific projects with the Sustainable Development Goals is now available in Ciência_Iscte. These are the Sustainable Development Goals identified for this project. For more detailed information on the Sustainable Development Goals, click here.