RESONANCE AND REINVENTION: DEBATE AND URBAN PRACTICE BEFORE THE PORTUGUESE REVOLUTION OF 1974

Abstract

In the 1960s, the print networks for dissemination of architecture amplified the scale of interaction and connected geographic regions that were distant from each other, providing contact with new ideas in terms of planning and the habitat in a rapidly changing society that was subject to demographic and territorial pressure and imagination powers that were considerably affected by technological evolution. In contrast, the response to the housing problem in Portugal was marked by “pessimistic” landscapes in territories subject to non-planning. This article seeks to provide an understanding of the extent to which resonance of contents and the international critical debate, both widely distributed in specialised periodicals, influenced the research into housing models, the forms of representation and the reinvention of urban planning practices in Portugal in the late 1960s. Based on the qualitative analysis of texts, contents and images published in the magazines Arquitectura and Binário and the original archive documentation of the specific case of the Almada Integrated Plan, the first moment of experimentation, the influence of this widespread critical perspective on the demand for, and definition of, solutions, which became common in how architectural conception focused on generation and aggregation systems, in a quest for flexibility and adaptability, in lieu of previous concerns with formal composition.