Academic literature on the topic 'House construction – Lisbon (Portugal) – 20th century'

The use of concrete materials in Portugal, namely reinforced concrete, began in the 19th century. However, during the 20th century, the increase in the application of this composite material, alongside the use of hydraulic binders, led to a disruption of traditional construction techniques and enhanced generalized application in concrete structures, combining aesthetics with functionality. In this paper, the authors will present and discuss several physical and mechanical characteristics of reinforced concrete materials from 12 award-winning architectural buildings constructed between the 1930s and the end of the 20th century in Lisbon, Portugal. These results are vital to evaluate their durability, as those buildings have an undiscussable heritage value in the context of 20th-century buildings’ valorization. Furthermore, the results will contribute to the knowledge of the current state of conservation of these materials and will allow an understanding of the evolution in the application of national regulations during this period.

Conservation, increasing the useful life period of existing significant buildings with minimum consumption of new materials, as much as possible of low-embodied energy, is an important step towards sustainable rehabilitation, while also contributing to the preservation of the cultural heritage. In the context of 20th-century buildings’ conservation, the knowledge of construction techniques and applied materials is essential to pursue sustainable preservation and rehabilitation actions. This paper presents the main construction types and characteristics of a set of architecture award-winning buildings in Lisbon (Portugal) between 1903 and 2002 along with an inspection of the main anomalies detected in renders, plasters, and concrete surfaces. The applied methodology made it possible to classify plasters, renders, and concrete materials according to their state of conservation. The study of 20th-century buildings is justified by the intense renovation activity in the city centres, which leads to the loss of their outer layers and their historical and original values. This study aims to contribute to future conservation actions that will guarantee better preservation concerning sustainable materials, i.e., compatible materials to the existing ones that enhance the durability of the old buildings and minimize the use of new materials.

In the early 20th century in Portugal, a new architecture was produced as the offspring of different references, conforming to a process of “Portugueseness” based on the picturesque. From the beginning of the dictatorship in 1926, the State took advantage of that phenomenon to sublimate nationalist values. Through the first programs of mass housing construction, the single-family house became an object of consumption and a cornerstone of national identity. The search for identity brings together different architectures across the century featuring a renewed Portuguese sentiment infused with different perspectives on the “homeland”, its history and its culture.

The Portuguese Sign Language (hereinafter LGP) is linked to the deaf education in Portugal for decades. Its genesis is found in the first institutes in Lisbon and Porto in the 19th century, in which a considerable number of deaf people had gathered and developed signed communication systems. During the 19th century, the methodologies used in their education were based on these signed systems and the manual alphabet. With the advent of oralist methodologies introduced in Portugal, these signed communication systems were banned from the classroom, although deaf students continued to develop their sign communication clandestinely. The LGP was rescued in the 80s and 90s of the 20th century as a result of the studies carried out by the University of Lisbon in partnership with the Portuguese Association of the Deaf, and of the first attempts to implement bilingual education for deaf students. Both developments demonstrated the need to teach LGP as a first language to deaf students and the construction of an LGP curriculum. The first national LGP curriculum is published (DGIDC, 2008) with the publication of the Decree-Law 3/2008, which regulated deaf bilingual education for the first time in its Article 23. In 2018, two new Decree-Laws were published (54/2018 and 55/2018) that revoke the previous Decree-Law and promote a curriculum review of all school subjects. To understand the effectiveness of the 2008 LGP curriculum, we carried out an exploratory study. We interviewed four deaf LGP teachers who suggested the reformulation of the LGP curriculum, respecting the 2018 legislation and the reality of the current deaf school population.

The territory that currently corresponds to the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA) has historically supplied fresh food to the urban population until half way through the 20th century. In 2018, the land use was still composed 38% of agricultural area, supplying 12% of the total food produced and consumed in Portugal. However, the operation of this food system is not subject to any regulations either in terms of spatial planning or land use management and, as such, its impact on sustainability transition in the region is not yet properly known. How to drive food transition in the LMA has thus arisen as a prominent question. In 2019, within a living lab context, the first steps were taken to this very challenging pathway, in which the definition of a food strategy was identified as the priority to sow the seeds of a food planning process. Over the last three years a food network started to operate on a collaborative basis to co-define a set of long-term objectives, a vision for 2030 and a collaborative biannual action plan. This article describes the process on how FoodLink—Network for the Food Transition in the LMA—leveraged the foundations to set up an evidence-based food strategy in the metropolitan area and how its thirty members became committed to cooperating in a science–policy–practice interface for its elaboration. According to principles of action–research and citizen science that implied a direct observation and involvement of the author along the entire process, the results intend to respond to the three objectives of the research by: (i) contributing to the literature on food networks; (ii) describing how the networking process occurred and its main achievements in what concerns a committed action plan; (iii) presenting the first baseline to pursue a food strategy towards the food planning of the city-region. It is understood that these results on how the food transition process is being driven in the LMA may either be inspiring for the construction of similar initiatives in other city regions, within and outside Europe, or may constitute the referential starting point for the future assessment of this ongoing transdisciplinary process.

Defence date: 2 February 1998
Examining board: Prof. Horacio Capel, Universitat de Barcelona ; Prof. Albert Carreras, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (supervisor) ; Prof. Maria Eugénia Mata, Universidade Nova de Lisboa ; Prof. Jaime Reis, European University Institute, Florence (co-supervisor)