Mónica Pacheco | DINÂMIA’CET-IUL / CIAAM

Ana Vaz Milheiro | DINÂMIA’CET-IUL / CIAAM

Rogério Paulo Vieira de Almeida | DINÂMIA’CET-IUL / CIAAM

 

The housing complexes had throughout several decades a varied situation regarding production. An initial panacea for the housing problems and an answer to the dream of the emerging middle-class, they were adopted by public and private promoters. Simultaneously target of criticism and legislative prohibition (France, 1973), they were more recently considered heritage (Faut-il protéger les Grands Ensembles? Ministère de la Culture, DAPA, 2007). With the end of the Victorian era and with the redefinition of the interior space which spread throughout Europe, and also with the end of the most troubled large-scale rehousing period, the housing theme has in a way lost its initial drive. It is eventually from the large private promoters that some of the most interesting models for a middle-class with new aspirations are developed, a synthesis of almost a century of housing research. On the other hand, the fact that this class moved by car to work has also changed, in a way, the configuration of the public space and the understanding of it. While some have reinterpreted Clarence Perry’s concept of Neighbourhood Unit, others have become dormitory suburbs. Within this theme it is intended to understand:

 

5.1. If, from a typological point of view, there is a correspondence between a certain idea of urbanity inherent to the model in the definition of the current domesticity?

5.2. What urban, social and individual ways of life are proposed by this model and in which way they are reflected in the design of the public/collective space and of the more intimate space of the “house”?

5.3. In what way certain contexts, when confronted with this model, have transformed it in a satellite city, in a “neighbourhood unit” or simply in a dormitory suburb?        

5.4. Which transformations have implied the differences between the local, climactic, cultural and social contexts or even the different familiar structures in the implementation of this model?

5.5. In what way the study and analysis of these architectonic-urbanistic models are reflected in their production?

5.6. How the diversity of promoters (private and public) questions the impact of a “universalist” housing model, centered in a modern and westernized culture, and in the emergence of broader positions regarding the establishment and discussion of the theme of urbanism and architecture for the middle-class?