From House to Home: Social Control and Emancipation in Portuguese Public Housing, 1926–76

In From House to Home: Social Control and Emancipation in Portuguese Public Housing, 1926–76, Nelson Mota considers public housing policies in Portugal under the dictatorship that ruled there from 1926 to 1974 and during the two years that followed the democratic revolution of April 1974. He reviews key legislative initiatives and projects to...

A Landscape of Multiplicities: The Production of Subjectivity in Álvaro Siza’s Malagueira Neighbourhood

This article discusses the design decision-making and the post-occupancy processes of the Malagueira neighbourhood, a housing estate designed by Álvaro Siza in 1977 in the Portuguese city of Évora. In this article, I use an empirical approach supported by an ethnographic research to discuss the production of subjectivity in the Malagueira...

Designed Self-Help: Producing Closed Forms for Open Buildings

Designing Self-help sounds like a contradiction in terms. Indeed, a great deal of the scholarly accounts on self-help housing excludes the agency of the designer, stressing instead the roles of the policy maker and the owner-builder. In the architecture discipline, from the late 1950s through the 1980s the notions of open form, group form and...

An Archaeology of the Ordinary: Rethinking the Architecture of Dwelling from CIAM to Siza

This dissertation examines architectural operations developed from the 1950s through the 1980s that challenged modernity’s “anxiety of contamination” and that have negotiated the boundaries between the realm of the individual and the social, the expert and the mass men, the local and the universal, modernity and the vernacular. The central...

Affordable housing in Portugal and Sao Paulo municipality: Comparison of space standards and socio-economic indicators

Building regulations and control in the face of climate change: Overview of the Portuguese situation

This paper presents an analysis of the main initiatives implemented in Portugal aimed at improving the environmental performance of buildings. The study is focused on the building regulatory system. However, to describe its framework a wider context is analysed for the following reasons: a) strategies and plans on environment and energy...

Main spatial defects of illegal residential buildings: The case of Alto da Cova da Moura districts

The purpose of the paper is to describe the main spatial defects in illegal residential buildings. Three research questions are addressed: What are the main spatial defects of the dwellings? What are the main spatial defects in the relation between buildings? What is the impact of spatial defects to the minimum habitability conditions of...

Main functional elements having defects of illegal residential buildings: The case of Cova da Moura district

The purpose of the paper is to describe the main functional elements with defects in illegal residential buildings. Three research questions are addressed: What are the main functional elements with defects in buildings and in dwellings? What are the main defects found? In which way these defects affect the use of buildings? The defects were...

The Portuguese building regulation system: A critical review

Portuguese method for buildings' Condition assessment: Analysis of the first three years of application

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the first three years of application of the Portuguese method to assess buildings condition. This method is a multi-criteria assessment methodology to determine the condition of the building and the presence of basic infrastructure in a fivepoint scale, based on a visual inspection. The method was developed...

Social housing in Portugal and in the municipality of São Paulo: Comparison of space standards

This paper compares the space standards for social housing in Portugal and in São Paulo, and seeks explanations for differences in the socio-economic context of both territories. The Controlled Cost Housing (CCH) in Portugal and the housing built within the program My Home My Life (MHML) in São Paulo Municipality are studied. The number and type...

Exigências de espaço aplicáveis à construção de habitação de interesse social: Comparação entre Portugal e o Município de São Paulo

This paper compares the space standards that apply to the construction of social housing in Portugal and in São Paulo, and seeks explanations for the identified differences in the socioeconomic contexts of the territories. The Controlled Cost Housing (CCH) from Portugal and the housing built within the program My Home My Life (MHML) in the São...

How small can a dwelling be? A revision of Portugese building regulations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the minimum necessary net internal area of dwellings that should be established by Portuguese building regulations. Design/methodology/approach – The following tasks are carried out: selecting the furniture and equipment necessary for each dwelling; determining the size of furniture and equipment...

Portuguese method for building condition assessment

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss a method for assessing the condition of buildings. The method was developed in Portugal as part of a new Urban Tenancy Regime approved in 2006. Design/methodology/approach – The method was developed in six phases, namely: definition of objectives; analysis of existing instruments; formulation of...

Porto "The Breakthrough": An Urban Design project for the Avenida Afonso Henriques