Le Modulor | Le Corbusier_1948

Portugal, however, had additional concerns, mainly a fascist regime that intended to create a “fake” past to Portuguese Popular and Regional architecture that would lead us to “forget” the misery in which common people survived. For that the

Estado Novo (“New State”) made use of Raul Lino’s proposals, a supposed “traditional” regional architecture, made up of middle class houses profusely decorated.

These invented models, consequently inexistent in the Portuguese rural landscape where an attempt to create a “fake” past, and so, as a reaction, “Arquitetura Popular em Portugal” (Popular Architecture in Portugal), a survey of the country’s regional popular architecture was published, where our endangered rural built landscape was collected and preserved.

'Arquitetura Popular em Portugal'|Book Cover_1961

(2004 reprint)

In the Estremadura region, more precisely in Leiria’s surroundings, one of the “found” types consisted in a poorly built adobe house, characterized by a closed porch in the front, composed by several volumes built through time and according to the owner’s needs and possibilities (harboring dwelling, cattle and crop sheds), with very poor salubrity… much different from the middle class fantasies of the fascist regime.

Popular house in Ortigosa/Leiria | sketched upon the models in 'Arquitetura Popular em Portugal'_1961

Thus, popular architecture being

made in the 1950’s/1960’s was deliberately ignored as it corresponded to an “intolerable miscegenation of architecture”, although it was still “architecture without architects”, made for real needs and eventually composing the rural landscape of the Leiria’s region (in Estremadura). Although it was still composed by several volumes, with different uses, it had a special feature, that consisted in the main house, very regular in shape, symmetrical in its façade and floor plan with obvious erudite influences (the

“intolerable miscegenation”?).

But when we talk about “landscape” and its features we (they?) tend to forget it as a whole or a sum, not a series of disconnected elements… and besides “purity” and “miscegenation” the way these different types occupy the territory was similar in key features: their scale, their fragmentation that could define a whole, their adaptation to the topography and local materials (even if no longer adobe, but still the region’s chipped stone using earth as mortar).

And once the previous type disappeared we were “left” with a “new past” that replaces the “old one” in contemporary generations, as they are the elements that compose our landscape, remember ancients ways of living and subsistence and constitute a “real” heritage, rather than an imagined (and desired) one.

Popular Houses in Alcobaça/Leiria | personal sketchbook_2001

Popular House proposals | in Raul Lino's 'Our House'_1918

Our Present is our Future Pastrethinking heritage through our contemporary memory

Popular house in Ortigosa/Leiria | 'Arquitetura Popular em Portugal'_1961

Popular Houses in Alcobaça/Leiria | photo survey_2001

So, is “this” past still to be ignored? Importing and reinterpreting other culture’s features is such an improper situation that could (should) lead us to forget one’s heritage and promote our landscape’s built

transformation/

/obliteration? And if we do, what will our landscape made of? Which is the legacy being forged nowadays?

on site survey | college degree thesis_2001

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3

1

In the 1950’s there was already a lot of movement around the architect’s community about the preservation of Popular Architecture, and Portugal was no stranger to this need to preserve a vernacular heritage that was bound to disappear. One of the reasons behind this concern was the Modernism’s idea that all past should be forgotten in order to create a new architecture suitable to new needs of “new” people.

Popular Houses in Alcobaça/Leiria based upon Alcobaça's CityHall Licensing Archives| master degree thesis on Architectural Heritage_2006

Again, some fieldwork: we can now find a massive single volume house, indifferent to the landscape and topography, abusing of “erudite” references in the multitude of elements that “decorate” the housing type: roofs with various slopes in various directions like Chinese pagodas, (a sort of)

greek/roman/neoclassic stone colonnades supporting numerous porches, rich stonework in window frames and strong colors, all argued to be “traditional” but brought from an inexistent local tradition, in other words, from an imagined (desired?) past.

Let’s move another 55 years further, to 2070: what will be this generation’s “past”? And “present”? To the latest question it’s impossible to answer what will be “fashionable” or “need” at the end of the century when society moves faster and faster. But we can preview a “hypothetical past”: ignoring and letting disappear our “present past” won’t open way to the reappearance of the “previous one”, meaning, the adobe house with the front closed porch. But most certainly will open the way to a process of sedimentation of our “present” that will become our “future past”. A fake one, as we said, capable of creating fake memories in one’s culture and heritage. A misrepresentation of a (supposed) erudite influence that never existed. A regional-portuguese-popular-and-erudite architecture based upon a fantasy.

Summarizing, a “historical” lie beyond the “material” danger where our present rural landscape disappears.

So, the presented case study - that actually consists in three different ones: “their past” (in the 1900-1960’s), “our past” (1960- 2015’s) and “our future past” (2015 and on) - reflects the need to review some of the proceedings used to classify and preserve rural landscape heritage (preserving valuable

features and/or demising distressing elements in the landscape in order to achieve a major coherence), through a process that involves social awareness and an efficient policy regarding heritage evaluation and protection through precise research and legislation.

Contemporary Popular Houses in Alcobaça/Leiria | photo survey_2001

Portugal |

Estremadura | Leiria

1960's

Past Present

2014's

?

Future

Past Present Future

Past Present Future

? ?2070's