In the early 1960s, when research in architecture and urbanism was integrated at the Portuguese National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC), a young generation of architects-researchers took the opportunity to experiment research methodologies which were already in practice by international referential research centres. Consequently, the study of urban form developed in Portugal, at LNEC, resulted from the adoption of different methodological practices and urban form analysis techniques. This presentation introduces the main research methodologies approached by LNEC researchers regarding the study of urban form, for the time period 1961-1974. This is a paradigmatic moment of urban form thinking, as it coincides with the emergence of a new discipline, urban design. The research that has informed this presentation results from an ongoing postdoctoral research, and was informed by a comprehensive analysis of the reports produced by LNEC’s researchers between 1961 and 1974, as well as contributions from recent interviews conducted by the authors of this presentation to LNEC’s former researchers. The presentation identified the methodologies adopted by LNEC’s architects-researchers, the respective disciplinary areas that have informed such methodologies, but also the thematic areas within which such methodologies were applied, and the adaptations performed to such methodologies, considering the specificity of Portuguese urban and architectural contexts. In particular we recall the studies of urban form regarding housing, a thematic line that engaged LNEC’s architects-researchers to test the use of research methodologies from three different sciences: 1) Social Sciences, through the collection of information based on surveys, questionnaires, and the fulfilment of databases; 2) Formal Sciences, through mathematical and computational approaches; and 3) Applied Sciences, through the use of design and schematic drawing. Though this work, we aim to examine and exhibit to ISUF community the different research methodologies and approaches applied, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, at LNEC.

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LNEC,Research,Urban Form,Architecture